posted 09-01-2024 09:35 AM               

Space Cover 769: Gemini-Titan 8 and the Leonard F. Mason

Serious thruster problems during the first hours of the Gemini-Titan 8 mission (GT-8), with Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott aboard, caused the flight to be terminated and resulted in an emergency splashdown in the Pacific Ocean instead of the prime recovery area in the Atlantic.

The Prime Recovery Ship (PRS), aircraft carrier USS Boxer, stationed in the Atlantic, was not needed and the destroyer, USS Leonard F. Mason, in the Pacific, came to the rescue. The Mason was one of only four secondary recovery ships in the vast Pacific. The Mason was stationed 180 miles from the new emergency recovery zone and had to race to reach the splashdown location.

Upon splashdown both crew and capsule were taken aboard the Mason and then departed for Yokohama, Japan. Ship, astronauts and capsule arrived the next day, with Armstrong and Scott then being flown to Houston.

Covers for the PRS Boxer are quite collectible, although she took no part in the recovery, while covers from the actual recovery ship, Secondary Recovery Ship (SRS) Mason, are of prime collector interest and should be quite scarce.

At the top is my Leonard F. Mason recovery ship cover nicely signed by Dave Scott. It was bought from Kim Poor's Novaspace in 2002. Any complete crew signed Mason recovery ship covers would be of interest to have posted here.

This USS Boxer cover has a more interesting history. I obtained it in a trade from pioneer space collector Amanda Hoerschgen in 1988 with it then only having Armstrong's autograph. The superb Neil Armstrong autograph was obviously originally on a blank cover and applied before GT-8. It was then later sent to the USS Boxer for the GT-8 recovery. Because of the autograph's placement at the left, the Boxer's rubber stamp cachet had to be placed toward the middle to avoid the autograph.

The story continues. Perhaps foolishly, because the Boxer had no actual connection with the GT-8 recovery or the astronauts, I nevertheless sent it to Novaspace for Dave Scott to add his autograph to the cover. Novaspace had arranged with Scott for a very informal paid signing.

But as the letter from Novaspace shown below states, Scott was not overly happy about the awkward airport signing situation and applied some autographs not well, including this one.

As I remember, this may have been Kim's first paid astronaut signing arrangement and Scott's autograph signing fee was quite high and, at least for me, resulted in a less-than-ideal-applied autograph (and actually, a special cover best left only signed by Armstrong).

Nevertheless, I ended up with two very desirable recovery ship covers for GT-8.

To finish, the destroyer Leonard F. Mason was named in honor of US Marine Leonard F. Mason who was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for his bravery in the WWII battle of Guam. The ship, Leonard F. Mason, was decommissioned in 2000 and was sunk in 2003 to create an artificial reef.

posted 09-01-2024 10:44 AM               

Your crew signed Boxer is a beauty! In my four decades of collecting, I have yet to get a Gemini 8 crew signed anything. And given today's minefield of high Armstrong autograph prices and prolific forgeries, I probably never will.

posted 09-02-2024 09:25 AM               

I was led to believe that GT-8 Leonard F. Mason recovery ship covers were quite scarce and a very long-time space dealer was glad to sell me one for $75 - which was a lot for a space cover back in the 1980's when I bought it.

But now it appears that they aren't at all scarce, as Dennis has indicated that 450 GT-8 Mason covers were done.

That does seem more than would be expected for a secondary recovery ship stationed in the "wrong" ocean for a Gemini recovery.

Hopefully, we can have at least one complete GT-8 crew signed Mason cover shown here. They would have to be among the rarest of all crew signed Mercury-Gemini-Apollo recovery ship covers, along with the Lake Champlain/MR-3 and the Randolph/MR-4.

posted 09-02-2024 12:03 PM               

As Bob pointed out, any GT-8 Armstrong/Scott crew signed "prime" recovery ship pickup cover from the other secondary ocean end is perhaps in my all-time rated "Top 3" of crew signed manned Mercury to Apollo-Soyuz ship covers.

posted 09-02-2024 01:53 PM               

I have an ordinary unsigned cover featuring the Navy RSC which I picked up on eBay less than two years ago for less than $10. As I recall, I didn't even make an offer, just bid at the lowest price and won it. I've just asked the dealer and he too is surprised - he says, "had a few over the years, probably more than ten, they've never made much money."

Here is an image of mine... There were two on eBay at the time. I chose this because of the Beck roundel.

posted 09-03-2024 03:15 PM               

Certainly, with 450 Mason/GT-8 covers produced and distributed, those covers are far from scarce, but the subject is about Crew Signed covers for recovery ships. And it appears that crew signed GT-8 Mason covers are quite rare (with Ken not having one is a clear indication).

So I can say that it's quite appropriate to include GT-8/Mason crew signed covers with MR-3/Lake Champlain and MR-4/Randolph as perhaps the rarest crew signed Prime Recovery Ship covers from at least the Mercury-Gemini programs.

While we are at it we could also possibly include crew signed PRS covers for GT-3/USS Intrepid (Grissom/Young) with those other three. Any cover crew signed by the GT-3 crew is rarely seen.

posted 09-03-2024 03:34 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Bob M:
And to finish with the Mason for now, it's fairly obvious that me paying Sean Marsar $75 for an unsigned GT-8 Mason cover back in the 1980's was about $70 too much, going by Alan's present-day pricing.

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posted 09-03-2024 06:00 PM               

By the way, the "450" number is just the number of B630 printed cachets that Beck sent to the Mason. It does not include the Mason postmarked rubber-stamped Navy cachets that are likely more than 450 in number...

posted 09-04-2024 07:05 AM               

And very interesting comments about the pricing of Mason covers through the years and now from Dennis and Eddie, the actual fairly large number of Mason GT-8 recovery covers produced.

posted 09-04-2024 01:41 PM               

The same is true about many of the Official NASA Cachet covers. Some of them, like the Gemini 5 and early Saturn launch covers, sold for $150+ in the 1970s and 1980s. Today you can usually buy them for less.

Another reason why Official NASA cachet and Prime Recovery Ship covers sold at a premium back then was because the limited number of dealers didn't sell the same covers. For example Centennial Covers, Ross Weitrich and Clyde Sarzin didn't sell Official NASA cachet or Recovery Ship covers, so if you wanted those covers you paid a premium.

posted 09-05-2024 09:58 AM               

Yes, there weren't a lot of safe and ideal possibilities for covers and astronaut autographs back then and we had to mainly rely on and trust the dealers to provide authentic and fairly priced material. Some times that worked out and sometimes it didn't, certainly for me.

Early on I bought my share of fake astronaut autographs with one prime example relating to the subject of this SCOTW: Gemini-Titan 8.

Being deep into crew signed covers back then, I was desperate to acquire a crew signed GT-8 cover and Seymour Rodman was happy to provide one for me.

I can't find it now or remember its price, but it surely was at least several hundred dollars. I was more hoping the autographs were authentic than knowing they were and, sadly, after some time and others' opinions I realized I had been took.

I contacted Rodman about my concerns with the autographs and he was offended and stopped sending me price lists as punishment.

This is just one account about one dealer I had dealings with and usually most ended better than this one example.

One smaller dealer that was very safe and honest to deal with was Adam Haewood, unlike some of the bigger dealers who may not have been totally ethical or even very knowledgeable about their wares. Adam started and ran his business as a teenager and ran it while he wasn't delivering newspapers on his route.

Our beloved hobby has had its share of various people who sold space material, with several that it would have been best to have been very careful with.

posted 09-07-2024 10:36 AM               

This is a great USS Boxer Beck printed cachet signed by Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott with a nice bonus also signed by the Captain of the USS Boxer Albert O. Morton.

Your USS Boxer signed by Armstrong and Scott is superb. That has to be one of the best early Armstrong signatures I've seen.

posted 09-07-2024 01:29 PM               

Concerning crew signed Prime Recovery Ship covers - anyone brave and ambitious enough to attempt to assemble a complete set of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo PRS covers signed by each crew, would correctly need a Mason and not a Boxer, with the Mason the actual recovery ship and the designated PRS Boxer far away and uninvolved.

posted 09-08-2024 06:55 AM               

His answer to me was some what vague, not so much with Gemini, but much more with crew signed Apollo and Skylab (covers and photos) along with lots of shuttle crew pictures. Maybe some others like Bob might have a better answer.

What I do know, Tim, is that he did have maybe well-over a hundred or more Armstrong signed photos along with a bunch of other signed individual astronauts and full crews of all flights, but much-more-so by the Apollo 12 crew.

posted 09-08-2024 09:57 AM               

In my quest to obtain a GT-8 crew signed launch cover, I asked if he had any to sell and from his safe deposit box at his bank he took out about six GT-8 signed covers and took slightly indistinct photos of several at one time for me.

But no, no recovery ship signed covers at all, but there were three Orbit crew signed covers, one was a "Plugged 9", another Orbit, but with suspect autographs, a third Orbit with good autographs, and an excellent Swanson and, to me, the best GT-8 crew signed cover I've ever seen. It was an official NASA/KSC cacheted launch cover with superb autographs.

That GT-8 NASA/KSC crew signed cover had been in a Superior auction years earlier and I bid on it but it went fairly high, but I hoped at least that it had found a deserving and appreciative home in some serious collector's collection. But, no, it ended up in Stonely's safe deposit box and who knows when it might ever see the light of day again, among countless other space cover gems?

posted 09-08-2024 10:03 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Ken Havekotte:
A hundred or more GT-8 Mason crew signed covers out there?

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posted 09-08-2024 10:22 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Bob M:
...did have large quantities of much space autograph material.

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posted 09-08-2024 12:23 PM               

As for Robert above, I didn't know or just can't recall that Stonely had a major flood before his death. That may explain why we're not seeing more material from his estate on the market.

posted 09-08-2024 01:55 PM               

But he kept much/most of his best material in safe deposit boxes and probably kept much of his less-valuable large inventory (signed astronaut-authored books, cosmonaut material, much Shuttle-related material, etc.), mostly in his home that may have been affected by weather damage.

I do have a clear copy of the GT-8 crew signed NASA/KSC cover that Stonely bought from Superior. Unfortunately not a Mason, but a superb GT-8 crew signed launch cover that rests comfortably somewhere with his widow.

posted 09-08-2024 06:47 PM               

This a text book example of a wonderfully done and autographed crew signed cover.