Page 32 - Demo

Because the release of the Project Mercury stamp was kept secret, none of the official Cape Canaveral First Day Covers were produced with cachets. Which meant that individuals, or companies who serviced covers, had to add their cachets after February 20, 1962. Actually, some people are still adding cachets to plain Project Mercury First Day Covers well into the 21st century. For collectors, these late additions are know as %u201cAdd-Ons,%u201d and are less valued%u2014unless they have some special quality. Early cachets are said to be %u201cof-the-period,%u201d and are regarded as legitimate if they were produced within two years of the stamp%u2019s release date. That allowed artists plenty of time to hand-paint cachets, which some did in runs of 50 or more. The Mellone%u2019s Specialized Catalog of First Day Covers of the 1960s, A Decade of Cachets, lists 155 different cachets for the Project Mercury stamp (some of which were produced in different colors)%u2014considerably more than for other stamps of that era. These are all considered of-the-period. There are also many of-the-period cachets in existence that are not listed in Mellone%u2019s. There is a later publication, Mellone%u2019s First Day Cover Encyclopedia of First Cachets Revealed, Vol. 3, The 60s Decade, that lists the first cachets for the Project Mercury stamp. It uses the Mellone numbers that can be found in the above document, however it also contains some cachets which are not in that publication. These have a letter or an alphanumeric designation, rather than a number.The First Day Covers in this collection have their Mellone%u2019sdesignation (e.g. M-64, M-K, M-G2) shown after the caption title. Those Not-In-Mellone, are designated NIM. And those that are not of-the-period are labeled as Add-Ons.