Space Cover 822: Combo space coversFor space enthusiasts who collects space covers, we have many options. I collect First Day Covers, recovery ship covers, flown covers, show covers, and my favorite — combo covers. I personally really enjoy finding those covers that a cachetmaker has spent time and effort to combine related stamps and cancels creating an interesting and cohesive cover telling a story.
I have many of these covers in my collection but for this Space Cover of the Week I would like to flip it up a little and focus on the "interesting" part. The following large format covers all have multiple cancels from different locations, some have both United States and foreign stamps, some depict a related theme, while others not. First Day of issue cancels are combined with show and/or event cover cancels. The common denominator is that they all are space related!
For this post I would like to focus on each cover being created by artist and cachetmaker Hideaki Nakano.
First up (above) is a large format First Day Cover celebrating Friendship 7 Mercury astronaut John Glenn's return to space aboard space shuttle STS-95. Here we see a collectible sheetlet of stamps with images related to Glenn's space shuttle mission issued by the Federated States of Micronesia and cancelled Kolonia Pohnpei Micronesia on Dec. 21, 1998, two months after the successful launch of STS-95.
The cachet artwork is a black and white pencil drawing of Glenn with the space shuttle launch in the background. When the United States Postal Service issued stamps for the 1990's "Celebrate the Century" series, one stamp titled "Return to Space" issued on May 2, 2000 showed the space shuttle and Glenn's Friendship 7 Mercury spacecraft. This stamp and cancel have been added to the cover.
For anyone who knows of the cachetmaker Hideaki Nakano of Michigan (who I have written about previously) you know he was not the most conventional of cachetmakers. He was an interesting guy, a very talented artist with a sense of humor and wit that shines in his designs. His drawings were irreverent and sometimes controversial, inappropriate and risque at times. I wish I have gotten to know him better, and learned more about him before his passing.
In the First day Cover community Nakano was well known for his First Day and event covers where he created pen and ink drawings and then hand colored a limited edition for each stamp issue or event. They were each hand signed and numbered and he added a red "chop," a hanko with his personal Japanese seal of his name which was inked and applied to each cover.
Little or nothing was know about his his combo cover collection until after he passed away. Thousands of First Day Covers appeared when his family sold the contents of a storage unit to a stamp dealer. Many of these covers have cancelled stamps spanning multiple years and in many instances decades! I still marvel at how he was able to organize his covers to create these multi-year combo covers.
Here are some of his space-related covers.
This cover combines a stamp sheet depicting astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom, and cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov issued by the Republic of Togo. This sheet acts as the cachet image for the cover.
Two stamps from the Space Accomplishments issue are applied, one U.S. stamp and one Russian stamp showing the Apollo space capsule, Sputnik, Soviet spacecraft, and lunar module. Both stamps were issued on Sept. 29, 1992 at the World Columbian Expo stamp show in Chicago. Gherman Titov and Buzz Aldrin both attended the ceremony and I am sure many of you attended the event and had your ceremony program signed by Aldrin and Titov at the event.
Another nice example of a combo space Cover is seen here with four First Day of Issue cancels and two show cover cancels. First Days include the Future Mail Transportation stamp depicted by a space shuttle and issued Nov. 27, 1989, and the Venus/Mariner 2 stamp issued Oct. 1, 1991 as a part of the Space Exploration series of Planets in our Solar System.
The third is another stamp in the Space Accomplishments series mentioned previously with this stamp featuring an astronaut with outstretched arm. If you know this block of four stamps you are aware that he is reaching toward another astronaut with outstretched arm signifying U.S. and Russian cooperation in space. The final First Day is a Canadian-issued stamp showing a satellite and issued on Oct. 1 1992.
Event/show cover cancels are from The Wolverine Stamp Club of Dearborn, Michigan, which honors the crew of space shuttle STS-51L, and a Federation Planet Earth Station cancel celebrating Star Trek dated July 14, 1989 Hunt Valley, MD.
This whimsical cacheted cover has two cancels by the Wolverine Stamp Club for their WOLVPEX stamp show. The pictorial cancels are dated Oct. 3, 1983 and honors the First Woman in Space, and Oct. 13, 1985 honoring the First American to Walk in Space. First Day cancellations are April 10, 2000 for the issuance of two stamps depicting the marvels of Space seen through the Hubble Space telescope, and two stamps in the Stampin' the Future series with stamp design artwork by children chosen in a nationwide contest.
Ok, show us your combo covers... extra points for covers with Paul and Chris Calle designed stamps!
posted 09-07-2025 06:31 PM
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