posted 11-01-2020 11:30 PM               

Space Cover #583: Apollo 7 Rare Beck Cachets

With the recent anniversary of the Apollo 7 flight last week, I wanted to feature a couple of very rare Beck cachets for the first manned Apollo flight.

Apollo 7 was launched on October 11, 1968 on an extremely successful 11-day flight that put the new Apollo spacecraft through a series of tests to ensure that the spacecraft was ready to take men to the moon the following year. Splashdown occurred on October 22 and the spacecraft and crew were recovered by the aircraft carrier USS Essex.

Many covers were cancelled on board USS Essex for the recovery with a variety of cachets. The most common cachet would be the US Navy rubber stamp cachet designed by Morris W. Beck and distributed to the ships in the recovery fleet. Mr. Beck also produced printed multi-color cachets for many ships in the recovery fleet. These were part of the numbered series of 1000 covers Beck produced. Numbers were assigned to certain ships but due to the Navy coordinating the distribution of the covers assigned numbers sometimes didn't get to the assigned ship.

The first cover pictured (above) is postmarked for the Apollo 7 recovery on board USS Essex but has a Beck printed cachet B720. This cachet was originally to be used for the AS-204 flight which was to be the first manned Apollo flight. However, due to the Apollo fire this flight was cancelled. Most of the printed Beck cachets numbered 716-720 that were to be used for AS-204 Atlantic fleet were later cancelled at Kennedy Space Center for the Apollo 4 launch on November 9, 1967.

It is unknown how this particular cover exists. There is a small "205" sticker placed over the "204" in the cachet as well as some additional rubber stamps added to the cachet. The cover also has the Navy rubber stamp cachet in black on the back. It may have been held on board the ship hoping to be used at a later date.

The second cover is similar to the first but is B717 and was aboard the tracking/secondary recovery ship USNS Vanguard. Again, there is a sticker "205" over the "204" in the cachet as well as the "Apollo 7" rubber stamp at the top of the cachet. This cover also has the Navy rubber stamp cachet in black on the back.

Interestingly enough, both covers are addressed to the same person. Maybe he knew somebody involved in the Navy or the Apollo 7 mission? It is anyone's guess.