Apollo 11 20th Anniversary First Day Cover Stamps

Apollo 11 20th Anniversary - Unofficial First Day Covers

Created by David Hamilton & Jackie Hamilton (Kira Matrejek)

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of Apollo 11 and the first man on the moon, a special cancellation postmark was created exclusively for the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. This postmark was available for four days only, from July 20, 1989, to July 23, 1989, at a special cancellation booth set up inside the JSC visitor's center, and at select post offices in Houston.

Also on July 20, 1989, a new $2.40 priority mail stamp commemorating Apollo 11 was released by the U.S. Postal Service in Washington, D.C. The stamp featured a painting by space artist Chris Calle, son of original Apollo stamp artist Paul Calle, depicting astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin holding US flag on Moon Surface. The stamp was only available in Washington DC on July 20th, and was released nationwide the next day (July 21).

We created a very special set of unofficial first day covers by having 55 of the $2.40 stamps flown from Washington to Houston on July 20th, mounted on limited-edition cachets, and canceled at the Johnson Space Center with the special cancellation postmark. Although the postmark was available at certain Houston post offices, the stamps were not, and the postal representative at JSC assured us that these were the only such stamps cancelled at the JSC cancellation booth on July 20th.

We mounted thirty of the stamps on a cachet made exclusively for the JSC stamp club. The cachet depicts Alan Bean's famous painting, "For One Priceless Moment". Alan Bean, the Apollo 12 astronaut who walked on the moon, has done many fine artworks of moonwalks, astronauts, and other space themes. To make these covers truly unique collectibles, twenty-eight of the thirty cachets were personally signed by Alan Bean, on the twentieth anniversary of his moonwalk (although the cachets are not dated, outside of the postmark itself). Mr. Bean retained one of these covers himself as a souvenir and collectible.

We have also initialed and numbered the back of these, with numbers 1-28, to indicate that they are part of our limited set.

We mounted the remaining twenty-five stamps on the 20th anniversary cachet made by Cover Craft of London. This flashy cachet depicts four photos from various moon missions, the Apollo 11 mission logo, and the 20th anniversary logo. The cachet is also embossed in a goldtone foil. The cachets were part of a limited edition from Cover Craft; ours are numbered from 581 to 605. We have initialed the back of these, next to the number, to indicate that they are part of our limited set.

These 55 unofficial first day covers are valuable collector's pieces, and will make a highly unique addition to anyone's collection. To our knowledge they are they ONLY such first-day covers in existence with the special 20th anniversary postmark.