posted 05-30-2021 11:56 AM               

Space Cover #610: Possible 2nd Enos Space Craft Cover

This week's space cover is an usual Mercury Atlas-5 launch cover with a possible connection to Space Craft Covers.

This cachet is very similar to the first ones that were used by SCC and are known as the "SCC multi-purpose cachet." A small number of covers with very similar printed cachets were produced for the MR-1A and MR-2 launches to test the idea of producing space covers. Around 300 were then used for Alan Shepard's MR-3 launch with some having an added inscription stating "Boy, what a ride" in red on the bottom. The basic cachet was then used again for Gus Grissom's MR-4 launch but the cachet was printed in green instead of black.

What makes this MA-5 cover different is that the cachet appears to be a rubber stamp made from the printed cachet used for those early Mercury launches. Some hand-written editing was done to the cachet to better commemorate the MA-5 launch with the chimpanzee Enos on board. The cover is also postmarked at Port Canaveral while most of the other early SCC with the multi-purpose cachets have Patrick AFB cancels.

The biggest question of course is did Space Craft Covers have anything directly to do with this cover or was it produced independently with someone possibly reproducing Carl Swanson's cachet and then editing it as needed? It has been suspected that some of Carl Swanson's artwork for SCC was "pirated" and used by servicers later on.

If anyone has any additional information on how this cover came to be please let us know!

posted 05-30-2021 07:03 PM               

As with this cover and the one Eddie shows, all the RSC impressions are rather poor. It is suspected that these were never sold by SCC because of the quality problem.

There are at least two versions of the Enos wording written on the covers.

This was also used for Glenn launch from PAFB with wording changed by hand to "orbit" flight. Another version has the RSC on top of a printed cachet and is hard to see.