I wrote the following catalogs back in the early 1970's when space cover collecting was a very popular subject. Sadly, as the manned launches continued people began to have covers cancelled for every event that took place during the flights. Many of these covers were insignificant and after the moon landing and the end of the Apollo program, many collectors lost interest in collecting further covers. It is sad to say, but forty years later many of the covers listed in these price guides can be purchased for less than they could back when the catalogs were written.
Each effort was an improvement over the previous one as I learned more about creating them. These were all done before people had personal computers and were done on typewriters. The illustrations had to be taken to a photographer to have them photographed and made into the correct format (number of dots) for printing. They were then glued onto pages and photographed by the printer.
The back cover of the 1972 Supplement states that Part Five: Lifting Bodies, X-15, LLRV, Balloons, etc., Part Six: Foreign Satellites and sounding rocket covers, and Volume Two of the U.S. Space Log were in preparation. They were never written as shortly after that time I lost interest in the subject and traded my space covers for a totally different collection.
After I stopped compiling the lists several others who were interested in picking up where I left off asked if I had any objections. Of course I did not, and was pleased that others would continue doing such. Ironically, I have never seen any of the published results and do not really know what had been published in the area.
Prior to that I was a member of the ATA Space Unit and was living in Peoria, Illinois. Periodically, the late Les Winick, Ted Parge, Betty Peters, Ramona Schmidler, Ken Baida, Harry Rose. Dr. E. Smith, and others would get together and talk about the hobby and our interests.
Recently, I was given some of my old publications by a family member and realized that for awhile I had been the Editor of Robert Rank's The Ranger, his magazine he sent to his subscribers, something I had totally forgotten.
When these price guides and reference lists were written 400 copies of each catalog were printed, with one of them (The first one, I believe) being reprinted with an additional 400 copies. A major stamp firm in New York urged me to reprint the catalog and I believe they purchased many of them. These catalogs sold all over the world and several foreign governments purchased them for their libraries.
Forty four years after the first one was written, and sold for $1.50, they are now on the internet for anyone to view. Ironically, I recently saw an early 1960s launch cover (Explorer 8, November 3) and looked for it in my price guide to see what value had been place on it back then, and found that it was not listed. Evidently back then it was a scarce cover as no one ever wrote to tell me the listing was missing, nor was it on any of the numerous lists I had collected.
