26 minute read
A Small Stamp for a Moon
A Small Stamp for a Moon
and a giant leap for stamp collectors
JIM ROTH
The Moon has forever sparked the imagination as it traverses the ocean of stars, storytellers creating fanciful ships magically ferrying dignitaries to our celestial neighbor.
When rocket pioneer Robert Goddard declared in 1913 that rockets would someday reach the Moon, he was laughed out of town. In 1961, when the United States’ Mercury Program launched Alan Shepard on a 300-mile, 15-minute suborbital hop, President John Kennedy boldly proposed that America could land on the Moon and safely return within the decade. The whole world watched as two Americans – Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, along with their command module pilot Michael Collins – pulled off the impossible against staggering odds in the summer of 1969.
More than 50 years later, in 2025, America plans to land a new generation of astronauts on the Moon to start permanent habitats and industrial activity.
Discounting stamps that just show an image of the Moon and focusing just on those that show human exploration, here are some lesser known facts about the 13 stamps that the U.S. has issued to commemorate America’s human exploration of the Moon for the past 50 years (or so).
1968 – Apollo 8 / 6¢ First Class
When Apollo 7, the first manned spaceflight of the Apollo Program, returned safely to Earth in October 1968 after a simple orbital shakeout mission, NASA surprised everyone by announcing that Apollo 8 would break the bonds of Earth to circle the Moon, an extremely risky gamble to say the least. Apollo 8 made 10 orbits of the Moon. When the mission returned to Earth, grateful Americans wrote to the U.S. Post Office Department expressing that it would be fitting to honor this accomplishment with a stamp.
Two weeks later – on January 9, 1969 – Postmaster General Marvin Watson in conversation remarked, “We should put out a stamp for the Apollo 8.” That same day, Lee D. Saegesser, an American Topical Association Space Unit member, and his manager, Eugene M. Emme, both employed with the NASA Historical Office, joked that the Johnson Administration would love to score political points by issuing an Apollo 8 stamp.
Later, Emme shared the thought with Dr. Edward C. Welsh, executive secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council. Welsh asked if there had been a Mercury or Gemini stamp. Told that stamps had indeed been issued, Welsh said he would take a look into the subject.
Meanwhile, the celebrated astronauts were visiting a joint session of Congress in Washington D.C. that very day when Representative James Fulton, of the House Science and Astronautics Committee, introduced legislation to issue a postage stamp honoring the historic spaceflight. It would appear that the stars were aligned for an Apollo 8 stamp.
The next day, Watson announced that an Apollo 8 stamp would be issued on May 5, 1969, the anniversary of Alan Shepard’s spaceflight. This was before even a sketch was scribbled or a city of issue was selected.
During the preliminary design process, Leonard Buckley drew up a series of concepts and the one shown (Figure 1) is similar to the final design, with a great perspective of the Apollo spacecraft orbiting the Moon.
1969 – First Man on the Moon / 10¢ Airmail
There were three separate official first day ceremonies for the Apollo 11 postage stamp on September 9 in Washington D.C. All three produced programs with first day of issue canceled stamps.
The official Post Office Department ceremony was held in the afternoon at the Washington Hilton Hotel with as many as 5,000 people jammed into the hotel’s International Ballroom. The three American lunar voyagers arrived to two minutes of thundering applause and enjoyed an afternoon of exuberance and levity. Armstrong noted that while he wasn’t able to create any revenue for the post office while delivering a cover to and from the Moon, he discovered that since postal regulations entitled small office carriers to charge by the mile, he would send a voucher the following month for the 468,000-mile delivery route.
A presidential invitation was required for a prestigious ceremony held in the White House. The program was not the usual list of stamp details. Instead, it was a historic memento with a portrait of Aldrin on the Moon, text of President Richard Nixon’s congratulatory phone call to the orbiting spacecraft, the jumbo stamp canceled with the dual first day of issue postmark, and a transcript of Armstrong’s and Aldrin’s conversation while on the Moon.
NASA held a “Splashdown Party” complete with its own program at the Shoreham Hotel in the evening with 1,200 invitation-only VIPs, contractors, and employees closely related to the Apollo Program in attendance; the three astronauts were again the highlight of the evening.
And, there’s a fourth “official” program: a USPOD approved “second day of issue” ceremony set for September 10, 1969 (Figure 2).
During a time when it was still a badge of honor to be an official first day of issue city, aldermen in Apollo, Pennsylvania wrote to the postmaster general asking to be considered for a first day ceremony. The Post Office Department nixed the idea, so the aldermen settled for the next best thing, declaring that they would have an “official second day of issue ceremony” at the Apollo Ridge Stadium, complete with dignitary speakers and a program.
There also is a very special philatelic item connected with the historic Apollo 11 mission, and I show it here, courtesy of an exhibit at the National Postal Museum. Here (Figure 3) it is possible to see with your own eyes the actual envelope that was carried to the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission.
It wasn’t until the three explorers left lunar orbit on their way home that someone mentioned that there was a letter to postmark.
While touted as being canceled on the Moon (and it was part of the plan to do so) the intensity of the wild landing, the preparations for a two-and-a-half hour excursion, and sleeping in a cramped cabin prior to the lunar liftoff put that task on the back burner. It wasn’t until the three explorers left lunar orbit on their way home that someone mentioned that there was a letter to postmark.
During the Apollo 11 mission, 214 covers were flown as part of each astronaut’s “personal allowance pouch.” Neil Armstrong had 47 covers, identified with an “N,” Michael Collins took 63, with “C” in the corner, and Buzz Aldrin had 104 with the codes “A” and “EEA” (Edwin E. Aldrin).
Three different cachets were used: NASA Manned Spacecraft Center Stamp Club’s vignette of working astronauts (Figure 4); Project Apollo 11 displaying three astronaut profiles; and the Apollo 11 mission seal. Two different stamps – Scott 1371, the Apollo 8 issue or Scott 1338, U.S. flag over the White House – were used.
All were autographed by the three astronauts. Each has a handstamp “Delayed in Quarantine at Lunar Receiving laboratory M.S.C. Houston, Texas” and a Webster, Texas, August 11, 1969, cancel.
1971 – Space Achievements / 8¢ First Class (two se-tenant stamps)
The Apollo 15 mission featured a new lunar rover enabling the astronauts to explore farther than previous expeditions (Figure 5).
Visionary artist Robert T. McCall was THE guy to call for space stamps and this concept art for the “Decade of Space” se-tenant (joined) stamp has most of the elements in the final design, with a swoosh of the entire “Race to the Moon” team: the Mercury capsule, the Gemini capsule with a spacewalker, and the Apollo spacecraft on the same stamp as the roving lunar explorers.
It was a great way to commemorate the entire decade, but deemed to be confusing, as they feared the public would ask, “Why are there three spaceships over the Moon?” A redesign was in order.
Creating a huge publicity boost for the se-tenant stamps, William Dunlap, deputy special assistant to the postmaster general, came up with an idea that the Apollo 15 astronauts could cancel a cover while on the Moon.
On April 29, 1971, Dunlap wrote to NASA, “The Postal Service would provide the envelope already stamped and the hand canceling device required. The planned ceremony would be announced in advance and the astronauts would carry this out very quickly on the moon while they are on live television. This visual presentation to all Americans will permit direct involvement in the Space stamp program and since Americans will be able to obtain a similar stamp at their post offices, they will have a direct tangible involvement in the Space celebration.”
NASA thought it was a great idea and the postal service had three months to produce a stamp and figure out how to cancel a stamped cover on the Moon. The postal service decided that “No advance announcement would be made in case of failure to reach the moon.”
On July 1, 1971, the United States Post Office Department ceased to exist; the new United States Postal Service now assumed the responsibility to deliver through sleet or snow.
The very next day, now permitted to create revenue in innovative ways, Gordon Morison, of the Philatelic Affairs Division, wrote to Dunlap recommending “that the Postal Service make an extensive printing of a souvenir program for use in conjunction with the first day of the Space Achievement Twin.” Dunlap agreed and advised that, “If we move rapidly and promote this from two cities we could anticipate sales of about $100,000.”
The lineup of 12 U.S. stamps depicting human exploration of the moon, from left on page 1094: Scott 1371; Scott C76; Scott 1434-1435; Scott 1912 (top left); Scott 2419; Scott 2633 (bottom left); Scott 2842; Scott 3413a; Scott 5399-5400; Scott 2841; and Scott 3188c.
The two sites would be Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the spectacular launches took place, and Houston, Texas – home of Manned Spaceflight Mission Control.
On July 28, two days after the launch of Apollo 15, the USPS issued a press release stating that, “at the request of NASA, a third first day city — Huntsville, Alabama — had been named for issuance of the Space Achievement twin postage stamps.”
Suddenly, a third set of cancellation devices needed to be produced for Huntsville, which meant that Huntsville souvenir folders were going to be backdated.
Meanwhile, Apollo 15 successfully landed on the Moon and the astronauts drove their spiffy lunar jeep on three jaunts. On the last run, just as everything was about to wrap up, astronaut Dave Scott reached under the rover seat and pulled out an auxiliary storage container about the size of a toaster; upon setting it on the rover, he pulled out what looked like an envelope.
Postmaster General Blount was in the Mission Control room in front of the screen watching this little stunt unfold.
Excursion Commander Scott said, “Okay. To show that our good Postal Service has deliveries any place in the universe, I have the pleasant task of canceling, here on the Moon, the first stamp of a new issue dedicated to commemorate United States achievements in space. And, I’m sure a lot of people have seen pictures of the stamp. I have the first one here on an envelope. At the bottom it says, ‘United States in Space, a decade of achievement,’ and I’m very proud to have the opportunity here to play postman.”
Scott then reached into the pouch and continued, “I pull out a cancellation device. Cancel this stamp. It says, ‘August the second, 1971, first day of issue.'” Scott pressed it on the ink pad and remarked, “What could be a better place to cancel this stamp than right here at Hadley Rille.” He set the cover on a flat spot of the rover and with one chance to get it right for posterity, carefully canceled the cover.
Blount watched Scott return the cover back into the “Lunar Post Office” and then announced that the stamp was now officially on sale at three Earth post offices.
1981 – Exploring the Moon / 18¢ First Class (One of a block of eight se-tenant stamps)
Ten years passed before the subject of Moon exploration appeared again on U.S. postage — on a very unusual sheet of eight stamps.
The central theme of this issue was the long-awaited space shuttle, which had just flown its very first mission on April 12, 1981, without any prior unmanned launches to work out any glitches. Astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen were very brave souls indeed.
The USPS wanted to highlight American space achievements, particularly the world’s first reusable spacecraft that was going to revolutionize the space industry. Veteran stamp designer McCall was chosen for the project in 1978, but since the shuttle’s launch date kept slipping, the real work started in 1980.
Only four of the stamps would depict different stages of a shuttle mission. The remaining four featured the Moon landings, planetary exploration, solar science, and the yet to-be-launched Hubble Space Telescope.
Since the lunar expeditions were mankind’s greatest feat, McCall chose the first upper left stamp for that honor. Since all of the other stamps featured spacecraft, he went with a sketch of the Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module approaching the Moon. The Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee nixed the concept, so McCall came up with an astronaut holding an Apollo Lunar Surface Drill (Figure 6).
McCall’s unique set of eight celebrated the shuttle by depicting the launch, booster separation, the payload bay at work, and the astounding landing on a runway of this new Space Transportation System. The upper left corner would honor astronauts on the Moon. The final iteration has the astronaut standing straight up with a drill, subtly hinting that all of the lunar missions had exploratory tools.
1989 – Twentieth Anniversary of the First Moon Landing / $2.40 Priority Mail
By 1989, the USPS had improved the delivery network capable of two-day shipping to the nation’s major markets and needed a stamp for the service. With the philatelic sales potential in mind, consideration was given to the fact that space-themed stamps were popular and 1989 happened to be the 20th anniversary of the historic lander.
Even though the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee policy stipulated that “events of historical significance shall be considered for commemoration only on anniversaries in multiples of 50 years,” USPS art director Jack Williams, manager of the Priority Mail project, chose to go ahead with the theme, noting that the Priority Mail stamp was not a commemorative stamp.
Chris Calle, an experienced stamp designer with a dozen issues to his credit, was selected for the artwork. Williams knew that Calle was the son of the 1969 Moon stamp designer, Paul Calle. The father-son link would be a publicity bonanza. Chris included several “stamp-on-stamp” designs, using his father’s 10-cent Moon Landing stamp in his concept sketches (Figure 7).
Among the concepts submitted, Chris pays homage to the original with a patriotic border.
The advisory committee, though, rejected that approach and went with a concept of both Apollo 11 astronauts raising the American flag on the Moon, which most likely made Aldrin happy, because two men had landed simultaneously in the lunar lander.
I have the pleasant task of canceling, here on the Moon, the first stamp of a new issue dedicated to commemorate United States achievements in space. - Apollo 15 Excursion Commander Dave Scott
Again, it was no coincidence that the Postal Service chose a popular subject for the Priority Mail stamp rollout as more than 10 million stamps ($24.4 million in revenue), never to be used for postage, found their way into collections.
Among the perks of being a quasi-governmental postal agency is that you get to promote the stamps with spiffy programs and offer merchandising deals. Colorforms, a major puzzle manufacturer, cherry-picked some of the more popular stamp designs and put out a line of jumbo puzzles, including the 1989 20th Anniversary of the Lunar Landing stamp (Figure 8).
1992 – United States and Russia Joint Issue of Space Achievements / 29¢ First Class (Four se-tenant stamps)
The 1992 block of four se-tenant stamps honoring the celestial achievements of Russia and America was the third issue in a series of postal cooperation between the two superpowers. A 1990 “memorandum of understanding” for this joint space issue specified that an artist from each country would collaborate in the design, each producing an identical painting to be used by their respective postal agencies.
The U.S. Postal Service chose Robert McCall, who sketched several concepts for the se-tenant design while on a flight from New York to visit his collaborator, Vladimir Beilin, in his hometown of Moscow.
The two spent some time working out the final design: four stamps of a continuous design, equitably honoring the space achievements of both nations. Their solution would incorporate 11 spacecrafts, three celestial objects and two astronauts, all in harmony.
The Moon connection appears on the bottom-left stamp of the quadrant with the Apollo Command Module in orbit, along with a tiny, upside-down Lunar Module preparing to touch down on the Moon. One of McCall’s early sketches had the lander coming in from the top, below the cosmonaut’s foot, but that might have caused some political grumbling, and besides, there’s truly no up or down in space, so upside down it was.
The 1992 summer issue of the USPS stamp catalog USA Philatelic (Figure 9) featured a preview of a new Space Accomplishments joint issue. The observant reader will note that the astronauts are wearing “USSR” and “USA” banners to signify the two nations’ accomplishments in space. Then, politics happened and suddenly there was no “USSR” anymore, which had artists McCall and Beilin scrambling to repaint the master artwork to reflect the new political situation.
1994 – 25th Anniversary of First Moon Landing / $9.95 Express Mail
In 1993, the Postal Service needed a new Express Mail stamp to replace dwindling stock. USPS Art Director Joe Brockert explained his subject choice, “Well, it’s an expensive face value …We have to do a new Express Mail stamp anyhow, and we need to do something for the 25th anniversary of the Moon landing. So let’s kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, and take care of it that way.” A third bird was also killed: the eagle motif used on previous Priority and Express Mail stamps.
The Calle connection to previous Moon landing stamps offered an obvious choice for Brockert – this time father and son would be working together. They came up with a great design with both astronauts and the American flag.
For this stamp, the Postal Service designated 13 cities as official first day locations! Washington, D.C. headed the list, along with 10 NASA center locations spanning the country, plus Wapakoneta, Ohio, Armstrong’s hometown. The 13th postmark was across the ocean at Noordwijk, the Netherlands, where the European Space Agency technology and testing center was located. A pictorial cancel depicting the Moon, a lunar astronaut, and the American flag was used for all postmarks, differing only in city names.
To top all of this, the USPS offered the public an opportunity to purchase a space stamp that actually flew in space.
NASA’s space shuttle had a program called the “Getaway Special (GAS),” which offered the opportunity to launch self-contained experiment packages or approved cargo in the shuttle cargo bay. The USPS packed a half million of the $9.95 Express Mail stamps into seven large boxes that were loaded into an airtight GAS canister, plus one smaller package that was stowed within the flight cabin of Endeavour. NASA billed the USPS $50,000 for the ride aboard STS-68.
Space artist Keith Birdsong created a commemorative cover for the USPS depicting an astronaut floating above Earth with an embossed gold foil frame where a flown stamp was inserted (Figure 10). This item sold for $15.35 and was marketed primarily to stamp collectors.
The packet that flew in the flight deck was serially numbered and signed by artist Birdsong, then placed in goldstamped portfolio cases and sold for $69. Unsigned, numbered envelopes were available for $25.
The Postal Service also offered the Moon Landing Stamp Folio for $4.95 as well as a Moon Landing limited edition print featuring the Calle’s artwork for $14.95. But wait, there was more! A special package that included the Moon Landing limited edition print, the souvenir sheet of stamps, the ceremony program, and a first day cover was available for the special price of $19.69 (the year of the Apollo 11 mission).
All of this was enough to make a stamp collector’s head explode.
1994 – 25th Anniversary of First Moon Landing / 29¢ First Class (souvenir sheet of 12)
In December 1993, a USPS marketing focus group that included stamp dealers, cachetmakers, USPS overseas agents, and an American First Day Cover Society representative was asked to share their thoughts about the planned Express Mail stamp honoring the Lunar Landing’s 25th anniversary. It did not go well, to put it mildly.
People were jumping up and heatedly demanding that the stamp’s price should be lower, or at the very least, a companion stamp at first class rate should be issued so that “children, overseas collectors of space topicals, [and] people on limited budgets” could afford a postal souvenir of the event. Even Postmaster General Marvin T. Runyon agreed that the Express Mail stamp was too expensive to be the Postal Service’s only memento of the Apollo 11 journey.
USPS manager Terrence McCaffrey and Art Director Phil Jordan were chosen to come up with a solution, pronto. The idea of closely cropping the large Express Mail artwork or digitally rearranging the elements didn’t work, so Paul and Chris Calle would have to start from scratch. They duplicated the lead astronaut’s pose but tucked the flag in tighter, while Earth, once again, was positioned in violation of celestial physics wherever it suited the artist. The second astronaut vanished into thin space.
With the new art approved, McCaffrey decided that the event deserved a souvenir sheet for people to collect. A row of four stamps by three deep for 12 stamps was chosen as the perfect layout. It may simply be a coincidence that 12 astronauts had walked, hopped, and drove around on the lunar surface.
1999 – Celebrate the Century, 1960s / 33¢ First Class (One stamp on a souvenir sheet of 15)
With the changeover of the millennia, the USPS saw the event as an opportunity to do a grand tour of the 20th century. This was a stroke of marketing genius as the USPS pulled out all the stops. Ten sheets of stamps, one for each decade, with 15 stamps per sheet AND, to boot, the public would get to vote on some of their favorite topics!
During May of 1998, the second ballot, this one for topics of the Sixties, was rolled out and one of the 30 choices was “1969 Moon Landing,” which captured 534,734 of the public’s vote. In a July 8, 1998, news release, the Postal Service announced that “The American public has decided the most memorable event of the 1960s was man’s first walk on the moon.”
USPS art director Carl Herrman’s concept for the Moon Landing stamp started with a scene of Armstrong on the ladder about to step foot onto the lunar surface. When Hermann saw that a majority of the 15 stamps featured people, he created alternate images to break up the monotony, and for the lunar stamp, settled on the iconic footprint, for which he lightened the dark tones and rotated to flow with the other 14 stamps in the tilted format.
2000 – Landing on the Moon / $11.75 Commemorative (hologram)
In the National Postal Museum archives, there is a small box that contains a meticulously crafted model of the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module smaller than a dime, complete with spindly landing legs, mounted on a mirrored plate of glass. Crafted to the exact size as it appears on the holographic stamp, this foreshortened artwork was scanned with lasers to create a 3-D effect that was embellished with a digitally drawn rocket flare and a lunar backdrop. The scene is both stunning and a bit puzzling. Is the celestial body in the background a very bright and vastly oversized Earth, or is it the Moon which somehow is on the horizon of the Moon?
This tribute to the lunar expedition was one of four souvenir sheets (along with a circular holographic stamp) that were issued individually but also produced as a large sheet 16 inches high by 20 inches wide that contained 15 stamps, a holographic tour de force that included circular and pentagonal stamps. The selvage of this sheet features a photo of astronaut Charles Duke standing next to a rather large lunar boulder, snapped during the Apollo 16 mission.
2019 – Fiftieth Anniversary of Apollo 11 Moon Landing / Two Forever Commemoratives (Issued during 55¢ First Class rate)
For reasons of its own, the USPS decided that the stamp design for the 50th anniversary of the lunar mission would not feature artwork created by Chris Calle, which would have been a nice gesture, had they gone with tradition.
Instead, Art Director Antonio Alcalá chose to use the iconic photo of Buzz Aldrin’s helmet with Neil Armstrong’s reflection on the gold faceplate, a unique photo of the astronaut pair (Figure 11) – because Neil was carrying the only camera on the Moon, firmly strapped to his suit.
Antonio paired this with a photo of the Moon by Gregory H. Revera, with a tiny dot (intended to be yellow, but printing the single spot was problematic) indicating the Eagle lunar module’s landing site, with a black background on both stamps (making any overlapping postmark impossible to read) and a silver ink “undercoat” that put a bit of flash on the pair of stamps.
The stamps were issued a day early, on July 19, 2019, because the actual date of the anniversary fell on Saturday. This puzzled many collectors since there have been first day ceremonies held on the weekends for past stamp issues.
This stamp issue may well be the last created by the USPS to commemorate an anniversary of the historic 1969 lunar landing because by the time the 100th anniversary rolls around (46 years from now) stamps will probably have become history themselves.
Master Die Aboard Apollo 11
At some point before the blast-off of Apollo 11, someone at NASA or the Postal Service decided that it would be a great promotional gimmick to carry onboard the Command Module the actual master die that the new airmail stamp would be printed from. NASA commanders, though, noted that master dies are not known for being lightweight and the dies would likely be too heavy to launch. Someone determined the solution was to cut away excess metal to the bare minimum. Shown below is the die and a “proof print” of the black die.
The Author
Jim Roth has been a graphic artist for a half century, has collected spacethemed stamps and covers since 2005, and has been creating covers for American contemporary space events under the label “Mission 57” since 2006. He is currently working on the story of the Palomar Mountain Observatory stamp to start his “Exploring Space on 2 Square Inches (or less!)” series of American space-themed stamps. He is grateful for his wife’s support and love that ignites his universe.
