Philatelic Snippets

Most Confidential - For Members Eyes Only

Your intrepid compiler has come across many interesting and odd things in his search through the catalogues etc - on your behalf, but this latest item to be discovered is the most mind boggling so far.

As you all know the Russians launched the first rocket in 1957 to put the first ‘satellite’ into orbit followed closely in early 1958 by the USA, but were they the first as the history books would have us believe?

Just think a small country being the first in space, beating the two super powers to it and making them the laughing stock of the World. Not possible I hear you say but just such a country did issue a stamp in mid 1957 showing a hither to unknown rocket launch.

Even more startling is the background design showing two of these rockets already in orbit, and although the event is cleverly disguised in the design of the stamp there are clear indications that Russia may not have launched the first space rocket after all.

Why have we not heard of it before?

Why has no one noticed it before?

Why do a lot of people disappear every year?

If you do not hear from me again please check with the KGB or CIA or if brave enough check RYUKTU sg58 and join me, after all they cannot lock us all up or can they?

Harvey Duncan

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Harvey Sees The Last of MIR

ASSS Treasurer Harvey Duncan returned in early April from an extended stay in the Antipodes with this son and family. Here he recounts one highlight.........

New Zealand with its clear atmosphere is a marvellous place to observe the heavens and spacecraft as they pass overhead, so I interrupted my holiday occasionally to take advantage of this.

So it was that early on the evening of the 22nd March around 6:40pm I found myself atop a hill on the east coast of Christchurch in the company of some twenty oddly assorted men with cameras, binoculars and telescopes plus a lady who had chanced upon this group. Her knowledge of space matters was sparse but greatly enhanced when upon her enquiring about a light seen travelling across the sky from the west she was informed that it was an airplane coming in to land at Christchurch airport.

Suddenly about 6:55pm someone "noticed MIR" approaching behind us from the South — strange direction! But this was quickly identified as a polar satellite heading North on its orbit.

MIR was scheduled to appear around 7:07pm at an elevation of 7° above the horizon. Suddenly at 7:05pm a light appeared where MIR was expected but lower than anticipated. All instruments were trained on it to discover red and blue flashing lights — another ruddy aircraft!

Finally two minutes later another light appeared rapidly catching up with the aircraft apparently below it — yes it was MIR on its final sighting across the heavens before plunging into the Pacific Ocean the following day. It was only visible for a few seconds and too far away for a decent photograph but everyone was satisfied - we had seen it!

I also observed the International Space Station and the shuttle speeding across the skies of New Zealand plus several satellites while there.

I was also fortunate one evening while walking down to the beach en route for a beer with my son, when we observed almost overhead a polar satellite trace a fiery path across the sky from the north as it plunged through the atmosphere to its final resting place in the southern ocean.

If you are interested in observing the space station, shuttle or satellites log on to NASA’s "human space flight site" (on the Links page) click "sightings" then your "town" or the nearest one to you. Here you are given the dates, time, elevation, duration of sightings and direction to look for the various spacecraft in your area.

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The Great Montserrat Halley’s Comet Rip Off

Harvey Duncan gives substance to a suspicion we all have had about the exploitation of stamp collectors purchasing issues of doubtful integrity.....

We all know that present day issues contain items aimed at the collector and not for postal purposes such as imperforate stamps, mini-sheets but it was not until recently when I bought some mini-sheets from a dealer that I appreciated what the extent of the problem might be.

Montserrat is not a territory I would have associated with this problem but they issued eight stamps for Halley’s Comet (in 1986) along with the usual imperf. set all of which you can also obtain overprinted "Specimen". The eight stamps where issued in minisheet format with four stamps per sheet but with different values from the original set just to entice you to purchase them. (See WEEBAU pages 714/715 for full illustration). Each sheet was also printed imperf. with either a blue or pink hue in the border giving four different sheets altogether.

These were also overprinted "Specimen" making eight different sheets to buy if you so desired - a lot for one issue, to be sure.

However, there’s more! The sheets I purchased were overprinted for CAPEX the following year as following:

Printed in black with "CAPEX" and the exhibition logo in red, then the same in black. Not content with this some were then overprinted upside down and some twice to produce a double overprint!!

Therefore, if one was keen to obtain everything that was produced you could end up with with four sets of stamps to start with and eight minisheets. I have not heard of the overprints being printed "Specimen" so leaving out that possibility we have a grad total of FORTY sheets, discounting any varieties that might have occurred in all these printings.

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A Rare Cancel for Nimbus

By Bert van Eijck

You have no doubt all heard of Nimbus, the series of meteorological satellites which the USA launched between 1964 and 1978/9.

There exist launch covers for each of the seven Nimbus satellites that orbited the Earth. Around ten countries issued stamps for Nimbus, from Dominica through to Zambia.

There are also some postal cancels for Nimbus. One of them is a rare as illustrated. I bought the cover with the cancel some years ago in an auction but I did not know either what Nimbus had to do with a French ship, for the cancel reads "Bureau Naval’ over a French stamp. So I wrote to one of the world’s greatest naval philately experts, Mr Detlev Mehlis of Berlin, Germany, who told me that the ship is the French cruiser Colbert which was in the South Pacific in the summer of 1970 as France was testing atomic bombs on its colonial atolls.

Nimbus 4 was launched in April 1970 and had new equipment for radiation on board. The Colbert has a satellite receiver on board — as seen in the cancel — and probably could get data from Nimbus. The picture of Nimbus is now understood in this ship’s cancel, but what about the picture at the other side of the cancel. Mr Detlev Mehlis had the answer too. It is a "Tiki", a deity from the Polynesian Islands, carved in wood. And to complete the picture "Bureau Naval 64" is the ship’s identify cancel for the ship Colbert.

Interesting, n'est ce pas? Whoever has this cancel in their collection and would care to tell me how they came to acquire, I would be very pleased to hear from them. (If you would like to get in-touch with Bert, please e-mail ASSS for the address).

 

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