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Stamp Club History

The First Day Of Issue Covers

The big event, that changed the production of covers by the stamp club from a laid-back informal experiment into a major activity, was the announcement by the United States Post Office (USPS) that they would be releasing a new space theme stamp honoring Mariner Venus Mercury, in 1975. The club has since that point produced 6 First Day Covers (FDCs) related directly to JPL achievements, activities and/or people.

Mariner Venus Mercury

This news was first discovered through the postal service people who had been so helpful in the early club cover projects. The Laboratory public affairs group was very interested. In about January of 1975, JPL began a process of organizing with the postal service for the event.

The stamp club was heavily involved from the beginning. The club set up their own committee to prepare the first day covers, and to assist in the planning of facilities for display and sales. Don Burcham, a senior manager in the Advanced Planning Office who was also a regular member of the stamp club for many years and an enthusiastic graphic designer, took on the job of designing and producing the first day cover. This turned out to be the start of a long and productive activity for Don, designing club covers up to 1989, when his health finally forced him to turn over the reigns.

The MVM First Day cover design, based on JPL artwork produced for the MVM project by Art Beeman, required a four-color separation process for printing, and these demanding color registration requirements dictated printing on flat paper stock. Thus, the designs were printed, and the paper subsequently cut, folded, and glued into envelope form. The fine reproduction using this process spoiled us, and is the process which has been used over the years since to produce our covers.

Many of the club members got involved in the activity of stuffing the envelopes with the informative "stuffer"- a stiff paper insert which provides a better medium for the canceller machine than an empty envelope. The Post Office had to put the stamps on since they could not release them before the first day of issue. We could only afford to do 10,000 before the big day.

The Post Office hired several special extra staff for the occasion of preparing requests for first day cancellations. They processed our covers in the days before the event, and provided them to us at the ceremony, so that we could sell them there. They then processed first day cancel requests for more than three months after the event, including the remaining 8,000 of our covers needed to fill mail sales, and provide stock for future sales.

Club Membership grew to about 60 members at this time, and many enjoyed participating in this first day event. About 6-8 members manned the sales and service booth (we provided an "official" rubber stamp cachet for those who had their own covers). Others provided publicity, attended committee meetings, lugged boxes, licked and stamped, or whatever was needed. The club membership remained at this high level for many years due to the fun we all had at this event.

Spirit of Seventy-six

The success of the Mariner 10 stamp was evidently a factor in encouraging the post office to issue another stamp in Pasadena a short while later- the first stamp issued in 1976 for a US Bicentennial event. The 1976 Tournament of Roses was recognized by the Bicentennial Commission as the first bicentennial event. The stamp club had to figure out how this could be tied into JPL activity! The desired connection was found with the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West float entry in the parade. NASA was going to loan the Viking Lander mock-up to the group for their float whose theme honored Viking to Mars! Don then designed the cachet incorporating the float design picture with the Tournament and Bicentennial logos, and away we went. We printed 20,000 envelopes, and had 6,000 Spirit of '76 FDCs made up (a considerable expense since the stamps were in triptyche form, and therefore went $.39 per cover.) Then, since there were no first day ceremonies, we had to figure out a way to make them available.

After a successful initial sale through the philatelic press, and at the Laboratory, we still had a considerable stock left of the covers. This has been of considerable amusement each year as the slow but steady mail sales reduced the stock on hand. Needless to say, the number of unserviced envelopes kept the club well supplied in stationery. Still, this was a unique thematic tie-in with Bicentennial, Tournament of Roses, Space, and First Day of Issue collectors.

Eventually, through Open House cover sales and blank envelopes given to the kids who visited us, we have "sold out" of these ubiquitous covers.

Viking

On the second anniversary of the Viking 1 landing on Mars, July 20, 1078, the Postal Service issued a stamp commemorating the landing. The stamp was issued in Hampton Virginia, the site of NASA Langley Research Center. Langley was the project managing center for Viking, with JPL as partner responsible for the orbiter spacecraft, and the mission operations system. The club had independently decided on a second anniversary cachet, and the Pasadena Post Office provided a special cancellation (large bulls-eye cancel, fixed date, no killer bars). When the first day was announced, the club decided to use the same cachet to produce both Viking Second Anniversary covers (55a) and obtain 1000 Viking first day of issue cancellations in Hampton for official Viking FDCs. This was accomplished with the help of the Hampton-Newport News Post Office.

"Unofficial" first day covers (covers cancelled with the stamp issued that day, but in other than the official first day city) were produced by flying in several sheets of the new stamp, applying them to the club cover, and having them cancelled in Pasadena, all on July 20. Unofficial FDCs with both the special cancellation (500) were produced. Various club members also obtained regular machine cancellations on these cachets. The quantities of these are not known.

Space Exploration Booklet

Sixteen years after the Mariner 10 stamp, the Postal Service again chose JPL for the site of issuing the Space Exploration booklet- ten stamps depicting ten major bodies of the solar system and examples (or in the case of Pluto, the lack of examples) of the spacecraft sent to study them. This was the 1991 topic for Stamp Collecting Month, a promotion the Postal Service makes during the month of October to encourage collecting.

By this time the club had been producing covers for nearly 18 years, and we were ready for another big project. The number of different stamps posed a resource dilemma. We finally decided that the most popular and affordable approach was to produce large-format First Day Covers with the plate strip of 10 stamps, and also sets of ten regular sized covers, each with one of the stamps. The cachet designs would be the same for all the single stamps, and similar but distinct from the omnibus cover.

This proved to be a good decision when the Pasadena Post Office announced that they would produce a special cancellation, the "Space Station" cancellation, for the event, to be used in addition to the pictorial First Day of Issue cancellation provided by Washington.

On October 1, 1991, the booths were open and the people came. Both lab employees and the public were in attendance in good number. The initial supply of 1500 First Day of Issue, and 500 Space Station cancellations of the large format, and 500 sets of 10 small covers (of each cancellation) were amazingly sold out by noon at the first day site.

The supply of unserviced envelopes was put on sale to the desperate enthusiasts who had been left waiting to be served. They could and did then go and purchase the stamps and prepared their own covers- the numbers and varieties of these will never be known, but we sold an additional 500 large and 1000 small envelopes. These are not counted in our cover totals.

Still there were people asking for first day covers. The next day, the club officers decided to prepare a second printing of both large and small envelopes, and to prepare with them 1000 large First Day of Issue covers, and 100 sets of small covers with the same cancellation. This took care of the immediate need and provided stock for mail sales for the reasonable future.

The club membership again was greatly stimulated by this project. New faces have refreshed the membership, and the new collectors add variety to our activities.

Theodore Von Karman

The next year, the Postal Service, after many years of urging by a dedicated committee of space enthusiasts, announced the issuance of a stamp honoring Dr Theodore Von Karman, reknowned aerospace engineer/ scientist, professor of aeronautics at Caltech, and founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The stamp was to be issued in Washington in conjunction with the World Space Congress. The Stamp Club had to be a part of that!

As a part of planning for the previous year's Caltech Centennial festivities, honoring among others Dr Von Karman, we had become friends with Dr Shirley Thomas, the main force behind the committee to promote the Von Karman stamp. In this realization of their goals, Dr Thomas was to give a paper at the Congress on Dr Von Karman and his students. She graciously agreed to help us obtain first day cancellations at the site of the congress, which was open only to invitees.

The planning for the cachets became even more interesting when it was announced that JPL would be the host for a Second Day of Issue ceremony, with a special cancellation for the occasion.

With these plans in mind, a cachet was designed by Helen Holloway. Helen had earlier designed a cachet for the Robert Millikan stamp issued at Caltech January 26, 1982. At that time Helen was not yet a club member, but had for 10 years lobbied the Stamp Design Advisory Committee of the Postal Service for a stamp honoring Dr Millikan, a Nobel prize winning physicist and former president of Caltech. Helen had for many years worked in the Physics Department at Caltech, and had been Robert Millikan's secretary. The Von Karman cachet design which she produced for the club was modeled after her Millikan cachet design. She designed into the cachet several "insider" symbols of Millikan and Caltech. See if you can find them.

This cachet turned out to be useful for not only the Von Karman First Day of Issue in Washington on September 31, 1992, and the Second Day of Issue in Pasadena on October 1, but also for several other events to be described in chapter 11- Special Events. Two combination covers were also produced. The World Space Congress had a special second-day cancellation featuring Von Karman "Vortex Streets" which were one of his famous fluid mechanics discoveries. Space Congress Combo club covers with both first and second day cancels in Washington were produced in limited numbers. Also, Unofficial First Day cancels were applied in Pasadena, along with the "official" Second day cancels. These Pasadena Combo club covers were also in limited amounts, but both were sold on the list for sometime afterward.

With the help of Shirley and her husband Bill Thomas (spending much time in the midst of their schedule at the Congress putting the stamps on 700+ covers for us, and lugging the box home with their own material), the club had available for sale 500 Von Karman FDCs plus numerous other covers described later.

At JPL, the Second Day of Issue ceremony was well attended, and the club produced 600 covers for that event.

Apollo 11 25th Anniversary

On July 20, 1994, NASA celebrated the 25th Anniversary of Apollo 11 Landing on the Moon. At each NASA center, a first day ceremony was held to issue special commemorative stamps honoring this event. Two stamps were issued - a $0.29 and a $9.95 stamp. The Stamp club produced covers with the $0.29 stamp for the JPL event, and these Apollo 11 25th Anniversary covers used the design prepared for the second day of the JPL Open House, which had been held the previous week-end. The second day had honored the Apollo 11 25th Anniversary (see the chapter 11 Special Events description of that event.)

Sojourner

In 1997, the Post Office announced in November that a $3.00 stamp would be issued in a sheetlet of 1 stamp with surrounding design, honoring Pathfinder and Sojourner, the exciting little rover on Mars. The First Day ceremonies would be held at JPL. We had little time to prepare but were armed with experience, and magnificent artwork was available from the Pathfinder cameras, so we were able to produce 2500 covers for both the whole sheetlet, in number 10 envelope format, and the stamp alone, in the regular size format. Again, the day was hectic, and we were busy producing covers while we were selling them, but everyone had a good time, and the designs were a big hit.

Hubble

When the Post office in the year 2000 program announced their intention to produce a sheet of stamps honoring Edwin Hubble, we hoped that the First Day site would be at JPL. Alas, the Goddard Space Flight Center was given that honor (they manage the Hubble Space Telescope). But since JPL built the Wide Field and Planetary Camera (WF/PC), whose pictures were used for the design of the stamps, we decided to produce FDCs as well. Then the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena (where Hubble did his most famous work) was selected as an alternate first day site, and they invited us to sell covers at their celebration. Dr. Shirley Schweizer, an astronomer assigned to this new field of producing First Day Covers, collaborated with us as we and they designed covers for our respective organizations. We sold about 350 of our 400 sets of 5 Hubble Pasadena First Day Covers, one for each of the 5 stamps, at the Carnegie celebration. In planning to produce more for the mail sails, we found out that the Post Office had withdrawn the canceller - it erroneously had the words "First Day of Issue" in the killer bars - apparently a no-no, since this was a secondary site. Within a few days a new canceller identical to the original, but without the offending words, was made available, and so we now had 2 different versions of our covers. We decided to go ahead and produce 300 more sets with the new canceller, which we have sold steadily since the April 10 day of issue.

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