Project Mercury First Day Covers

The U.S. Post Office Department made history on February 20, 1962 when, for the first time, a postage stamp was issued simultaneously with the event it commemorated. Without prior notification, a stamp honoring the Project Mercury man in space program was announced on the afternoon of February 20th once it was certain the space flight of Marine Corps astronaut John Glenn and Friendship 7 was successful.

A postal station was established at Cape Canaveral Florida that became the site of the "First Day of Issue" covers produced by the USPOD. 304 other post offices were notified to open the secret packages shipped earlier to them and immediately sell the new stamps. These other post offices had only from the time of the announcement (3:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time) until the close of business that day to service first day covers for collectors. In the brief amount of time available for first day cancels, the stamps found their way to additional post offices not on the official list of 305 including Railway Post Offices and Highway Post Offices.

Unlike the Cape Canaveral first day covers, which were available for months, and unlike today's first day cover service, there was no grace period for servicing Project Mercury first day covers at these post offices. The window of opportunity for FDC service was only from the time of the afternoon announcement until the close of business or the last mail collection on February 20th. This is what makes the pursuit of Project Mercury FDCs from any post office so challenging. In many cases, only a handful of FDCs were produced from the thousands of stamps sold that day at each post office.

Even more intriguing and collectible are the unofficial first day covers that were cancelled at sites other than the official 305 cities. These are usually found without cachets.

For a detailed account of the event on February 20, 1962 and the fascinating story about the surprise stamp issue, see the 14-page article written by me, "Project Mercury: The Day the U.S. Post Office Department Surprised the World" in the February 2002 issue of American Philatelist.

It can be argued that this stamp did more to make new stamp collectors than any other stamp issue of the twentieth century.

THE EVENT
On February 20, 1962 a worldwide audience watched as the United States attempted to send its first astronaut into space to orbit around the earth. The astronaut, United States Marine Corps Lt. Col. John H. Glenn, Jr. of New Concord, Ohio, and his spacecraft, Friendship 7, blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on top of a Mercury-Atlas rocket at 9:48 a.m. after four delays in the countdown. After circling the earth three times in 4 hours and 56 minutes at speeds of 17,500 miles per hour and travelling nearly 81,000 miles, he returned to earth landing in the Atlantic Ocean at 2:43 p.m. Glenn and Friendship 7 were plucked from the ocean by the USS Noa at 3:04 p.m., just 21 minutes after splashdown.

A first day cover with a cachet done by famous artist Dorothy Knapp. Cancelled at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The cachet on this first day cover was produced by artist Bernard Goldberg and cancelled in New York City.

Yes, that's me in 1962! Astronaut John Glenn is presenting me with my trophy for Best Junior Exhibit at the Ohio State Fair—an exhibit of stamps and covers honoring Glenn's historic flight earlier that year.

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