posted 01-29-2023 06:40 PM               

Space Cover 687: Apollo 11 FDC Extra Cancel

The release of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing stamp celebrating Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin Aldrin Jr's lunar mission, marked an important event for the philatelic world. The stamp, released on September 9, 1969, was made from the same master die that the astronauts took with them to the moon. Additionally, it was the largest stamp the United States had issued up to that point.

The stamp's designer, Paul Calle, had previously designed the 1967 Accomplishments in Space stamp featuring NASA's Gemini Program. In addition to his work designing postage stamps, Calle was a professional sketch artist for NASA. He had sketched the astronauts as they prepared for their mission and also watched the Apollo 11 launch at Kennedy Space Center. His design for the Moon Landing Issue stamp illustrates an astronaut stepping out of the Lunar Module on to the surface of the Moon. In the three weeks following the announcement of the stamp's release, the Post Office Department received over 500,000 requests for first day cancelled covers of the stamp. One fifth of these requests came from overseas.

The first day issue cancel came in both hand and machine cancel formats with the machine cancel having the Moon Landing date and Washington CDS of September 9, 1969 in a vertical format while the hand FDI cancel has them in a horizontal format.

There are many collectors of Paul Calle's Apollo 11 1969 Moon Landing FDCs with thousands of different cachets – from mass-produced distributors like Art Craft, Artmaster, Fleetwood, etc. to one-of-a-kind printed or hand-drawn cachets.

There are also many covers with no cachet from people who just read about the stamp in the local newspaper on how to send for a FDI cancel and wanted an Apollo 11 souvenir.

Pictured above is an unusual FDC as it contains an additional partial FDI cancel. The Washington CDS became unreadable over the photo cachet in the original hand cancel strike, so the postal clerk added a second Washington CDS above the FDI hand cancel.

Anyone have other FDI cancel variations or an unusual cachet to show?