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Club Story

Stamp Club History 

Introduction

Purpose of this Book

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) stamp club has produced over 120 commemorative covers honoring important events which mark JPL's contribution to the world's space achievements, and also recognize JPL's participation in the activities of the Southern California community in which it is located. This history presents a comprehensive reference of these events, serving as a catalog for the many supportive collectors. Equally important, it also provides a window into the process which produced them, and the people who made it happen.

History of the JPL Stamp Club

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory Stamp Club was founded in 1964 as a "sub-club" of the JPL Employee's Recreation Council (ERC). The principal activities of the club, up to about 1975, were the pursuit of fellowship, community, swapping of stamps, and gossip about classic philately. In 1975, the United States Postal Service decided to issue a stamp at JPL commemorating the Mariner 10 space mission, and at that time the thrust of the club's activities took a dramatic turn. Membership before that time is a matter of the recollection of today's "elders" of the club, but was rather small. Steady year - to - year membership of about 55 - 65 reflects the sustaining interest fostered by that event in 1975, bolstered by subsequent events all of which have been reflected in the Club's principal integrating activity- the production and collection of space covers.

Today the club is a JPL/ Caltech employees club sponsored and supported by the JPL Human Resources Division.

Space Covers as a Philatelic Collectible

In 1957, JPL, along with the Redstone Arsenal of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, launched the first US Earth Satellite, and within a few days, George Goldey and others had provided the first "space cover"- a commemorative of the launch consisting of a number six-size envelope, suitably decorated on the left with a "cachet", and stamped and posted from the closest post office to the launch site. This began a branch of the hobby of stamp collecting which has attracted many collectors from around the world, produced numerous spectacular one-of-a-kind rarities, and by-the-by stimulated enthusiasm for the space program.

Really, one could argue that there are many valid space covers preceding the Explorer 1 launch. Vanguard 1, for instance, though experiencing a launch failure, preceded Explorer 1 by a few weeks, and is commemorated on cover. Some rare covers celebrate launches of sub-orbital rockets from White Sands, Florida, and even World War II Germany. The genre has even been stretched to include "precursor" events to a space mission, such as rocket-sled tests, recovery parachute drop tests, and a whole host of activities which some avid collector has recognized as a topic for a commemorative space cover.

In some of these events, such as rocket tests, covers have been "flown" on the vehicle, providing very highly prized collectibles within the theme of space covers. The epitome are the covers flown in space with the astronauts, which are the gems of the space cover world, at least as far as price is concerned.

The Club Cover Projects

The 1975 First Day Cover produced by the stamp club for the Mariner 10 stamp marked our entry into the producing of covers as a club-wide activity. Chapter 2 deals with that exciting project, as well as subsequent first day of issues in which the club played a key part.

Prior to Mariner 10 First Day, we had produced a limited number of covers for the Mariner 10 mission events, and for launch of the Helios spacecraft. This was basically a one-person (me) ad-hoc activity with much encouragement and support from the other members who were attracted to these novelties. This is discussed in chapter 2- "The Early Covers".

Cancellation of these covers in Pasadena recognized the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as the site of the operations for these programs. Although not the first space covers with Pasadena cancellations, the club covers have brought about recognition throughout the space philatelic thematic collector community of Pasadena as a legitimate, and sought-after, cancellation for deep space and other events using either JPL's operations capabilities, or the Deep Space Network tracking facilities.

With the exhilaration of a first day of issue ceremony making us starry-eyed (chapter 3) , and the interest shown in our first day covers by the crowds of people at the booths, and through the mail sales, we embarked immediately on our Viking project launch cover activity. This was the first of many cover projects in which the spirit of participation among many members made the work light and the results very satisfying to everybody. This campaign is described in chapter 4, and the follow-on Voyager project in chapter 5.

After those major projects (actually during and after), the club adopted the objective of commemorating every space event that was noteworthy, and had JPL as a major contributor. These included missions which JPL had overall responsibility for (covered in chapters 6 -8), and missions from other centers, or other nations, supported by our expertise at JPL- Deep Space Tracking system, navigation group, science experiments, etc. (chapter 9).

Chapters 10 and 11 show how our cover activities expanded into events associated with JPLs other side- including anniversaries of past successes, celebrating Pasadena's centenary, and special shows and open houses.

Finally, the club has over the years provided rubber stamp cachet service for most of the events for which we also produced printed cachets. In this service, collectors send in a limited number of stamped, addressed envelopes. The club provides a rubber stamp with an appropriate design to decorate the envelope and provide information about the event. The covers are subsequently mailed back to the sender, from Pasadena, cancelled on the date of the event. These are remembered in chapter 12.

Since our cover activity is still ongoing and strongly supported by a significant contingent of club members to whom we affectionately refer as "lickers and stampers", this volume will hopefully be only the first installment documenting the growing and evolving catalog of JPL Stamp Club covers...

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