NOVEMBER 2022
.jpg)
.jpg)
Not too many additions have been made during past months but still over a dozen ASTP covers with mostly Russian postmarks and a couple of new cachets. Several Soviet club covers including pretty rare Kirsanov cachets and variations of previously shown. In the ISS area there was a welcome addition of several Sergey Chizhov cachets including a flown one for ISS 7.
JUNE 2022
.jpg)
.jpg)
Many things changed since last February. The war in Ukraine effected many people in different countries, and myself among them. This does not mean that I backed off from my hobby but there are certain obstacles that I don’t really know how to handle. The fact is that Russia is rapidly disconnecting from the western world and goes back to the times of ‘Iron Curtain’ of the Cold War. From the colleting perspective, I lost all my sources in Russia, and my supplies from Ukraine are affected by the troubles of postage due to the war situation.
Anyways the life is going on and slowly but surely the collection is growing. From my last acquisitions, several new ASTP covers and cards and some Soviet club covers including pretty rare Šiauliai cachets for the Sputnik 5th anniversary. I also added a couple of stationaries with rockets and space symbolic that I believe is appropriate for the collection. Several Tsiolkovsky cards and covers with one particularly rare - Tsiolkovsky monument serviced stationary, issued in 1958.
FEBRUARY 2022
NEW additions
Well. it took some time to get the updates but there are interesting covers that joined my collection:
- Soviet club covers including little known Mirny and Kiev issues
- ASTP covers including Soviet cachets and SCCS
- Russian covers of 1990s
AUGUST 2021
.jpg)
NEW additions
ASTP Galleries
There are not many new ASTP covers as it looks I am pretty much covering majority of ASTP inventory, still I was able to put hand on several per-launch and Russian covers. A long waited Konstantin Bushuev card from Kaluga Philatelic Society was a great find!
Club covers
I have added some rarely seen covers including Magadan and Kursk issues. Very welcome was two previously unknown to me Poltava and Sauliai covers for 5th Sputnik anniversary. Also planning to get club covers from 1970s and 1980s. Interesting postcards from Kaluga Club to commemorate GMIK constructions.
Soviet symbolism
I decided to add some covers that picture space rockets as symbols for Soviet achievements. Those include October Revolution anniversaries, Party Congresses, etc. I am not going to put any focus on them but add more when I find good ones for reasonable price.
JULY 2021
NEW additions
June-July new additions mostly include club covers with some rare ones like Magadan, Kaliningrad, Kirsanov and more. Several new covers in ASTP section with Louis Hamilton cachet, PARFOREX local post, and Odessa club cover. A couple of good tracking ship covers of NIS Gagarin and NIS Volkov.
I also reworked Soyuz-Salyut page to me to put some emphasis on several flown covers that are still pretty uncommon in my collection.
MAY 2021
NEW additions
This months new additions include a couple of ISS flown covers and dozens of Soviet club covers of early period. I also added some interesting postcards to give the website more authentic look.
APRIL 2021
NEW additions
I am extremely excited to announce that after about 3 years of blackout the website is back on original domain and I am starting to post new additions to my collection. Lately I got some really interesting stuff for the ASTP section and Soviet club covers area. I also managed to add several modern cachets that I was looking for years.
BLACKOUT IS OVER
SEPTEMBER 2017
NEW additions
A long-time awaited addition to my collection is this ATV-1 Jules Verne flown German ERNO-Philatelie card. 550 of these cards have been stored in CTB aboard ATV-1, then moved to Leonardo MPLM and flown back to Earth on the STS-126 Endeavour , spending in space 267 days. Despite much more known La Marianne club covers (EADS) this cards are rarely seen.
Another great piece is an RKK Energia 70th anniversary Roscosmos cover. Only 60 such covers have been postmarked on ISS plus around 25 privately designed envelopes.
JULY 2017
NEWs tab change
I started a new page on Facebook that will serve to promote my beloved website and astrophilately on the social media ground. From now on, all the regular news will appear there along with my notes on various subjects. You are also welcome to write your comments, suggestions and anything you would like to discuss.
Here I will put only very important updates like unique items and structural changes.
New additions
In the last couple of weeks of June and first week of July I have added some interesting covers including:
- 1st Baikonur “Space mail” special postmark devoted to Soyuz 4-5 docking. This scarce cover carries four postmarks applied in Moscow by “scratched rocket” device.
- ATV CTB flown German ERNO philatelic club postcards. These are much less familiar than Astrium (Airbus) covers that came in colorful folders.
- a dozen of new ASTP covers including scarce Artopages cachet and FMF local post.
- several MIR covers including Sergey Chizhov covers for Soyuz TM-22, TM-25 and Shuttle-MIR program
- two covers with rare postmarks - Kazakhstan cover with error and Plesetsk Foton M1 special cancellation that was actually cancelled -)
JUNE 2017
ISS gallery major upgrade
I redesigned the whole section dedicated to International Space station. Now it has four sub-sections each of them shows covers for different aspects or time periods. Although there is a possible shift in chronology but it is much more effective in terms of visualization and usability.
I also added around 100 new covers to different galleries.
APRIL 2017
Galleries updates
April did not pass through without bringing some updates, though not as spectacular as at the beginning of the month but still worth to mention.
First of all I had finally shaped by Baikonur gallery. I redesigned the section with postmarks to mirror Sergey Poznakhirko recent publication of “Cosmodrome Baikonur post” book. I also deleted the section with BaykonurSvyazInform special cancellations as these come in the relevant pages and probably not very interesting in a common pool.
In the Russian ASTP covers section I added a story of Novosibirsk exhibition and its’ commemorative covers told by Oleg Maifat. As usual there were some additions to other ASTP galleries - not too much but notable. I added previously unknown to me Artopages and Aristocrat cachets as well as long looked Colorano cover with Cape Canaveral hand cancellation over US and USSR stamps.
One interesting cover that came recently is for ATV-4 with personalized stamp and Ralf Schulz pictorial cancellation that has been nicely serviced to Robert Keller.
I received the 2017 Cosmonautics Day covers that I’ve sent to my US address from Moscow using Cosmonautics Museum cacheted covers. Unfortunately these covers got a wrong postmark – serviced one day later … OHHH..
The last but not the least are several club covers especially Vostok 3/4 Shaulyai examples.
Galleries updates
Another major update with more than 150 covers beginning with ASTP pre-flight package received from Ken Havekotte with a very interesting cover carried on Saturn mobile launched while deploying the rocket to the launch pad. As we are used to such occasions this was the first time ever covers carried on the mobile launcher deck.
Pskov covers are sometimes chaotic in the design and inconsistent in the postmarks but they closely resemble club covers of 1960s and have their right to be placed in my collection. I got several of them mostly for Cosmonautic day and Space age commemoration. Another interesting addition came from Kaluga designer Valentin Afonin with his interesting cachets and official cinderellas that are distributed in Kaluga post office.
In the cachet area this was a first time I encountered Astros-Press cachets – I got three of them for MAKS 99, Sea Launch and Soyuz TM-26. I continued to fetch Kazakhstan club covers that I find attractive and here are a couple of great covers especially for 1997 Shuttle-MIR program.
Finally I put some attention to Soyuz-Salyut and early MIR flights, honoring Soyuz-31 with several German issues, interesting Bulgarian cover for Soyuz TM-5 and several official FDCs. The last but not the least is a couple of covers cancelled with the latest Komarov Soyuz-1 flight 50th anniversary postmark + Alexey Pribytkov cachets.
MARCH 2017
Galleries updates
March was fruitful in terms of new acquisitions into my collection. Not only many galleries got updated but I’ve finally shaped and introduced Energia-Buran page devoted to the ill-fated but prominent piece of Soviet space history. It was not a simple task as despite the wide publicity there is not too much to show in astrophilately terms and took me quite a time to put it all together. Finally I was lucky to get my Kniga “almost flown” cover that gives the gallery more or less complete look – the theme itself is by no means complete and I have to work hard on it!
As a courtesy from Mr. Ralf Shults I got several unique pieces of ASTP commemorative covers from Hoyerswerda and Nordkurier private post as well as Balloon post card that I proudly exhibit in relevant sections. There are some other additions of ASTP pre-launch, launch-time and Russian covers.
5 new flown covers made their way to my inventory including amazing Sergey Chizhov flown card, Sovet era propaganda cover taken aboard MIR station by one of the last spaceflights before disappearance of USSR and my first experience with Roscosmos flown covers that I was lucky to get for ASTP 40th anniversary commemoration. The last but not the least are Soyuz TM-18 perfectly stamped card and usually colorful ISS 49 Energia astro-piece. Notably MIR gallery got several German pictorial cancellations for MIR 92 and MIR 97 projects.
Finally I had a flashback and realized that it is not a bad idea to show stamps along with covers – it makes nice appearance and supports the philatelic essence of the website. I do not plan to show each and every Soviet/Russian space stamp only those that in my opinion suite best to the subject of the galleries.
Galleries updates
There several dozens of new covers in my collection mainly in ASTP, MIR, Baikonur and ISS galleries.
ASTP – I finally got to add some more SCCS launch-time cachets as well as completed Bob Whitney section. Eventually I came over quite interesting commemorative postmarks from Rosemont, MI and Huntsville – leaving it only two missing US ASTP postmarks. One of the major achievements was to identify two faked Baikonur ASTP special cancellations that are now presented on the relevant page.
MIR gallery got a very uncommon Soyuz TM-8 cachet of Alexander Serebrov testing the SPK as well as additional covers on Shuttle-MIR program, mainly tracking from Goddard Space Flight Center.
I have also enriched Baikonur postmarks sections with additional variations of later types plus I am going to revise it completely with comments using Sergey Poznakhirko’s book – Baikonur Cosmodrome Post.
ISS gallery received sevaral STS and cargo ships covers in addition to some nice commemorative cachets.
FEBRUARY 2017
Rocket Mail
This is the long waited page about Russian rocket mail activities. There are not too much to show as there were only 3 confirmed projects involving flown astrophilately items, but much to explain as there are many speculations around and some details are not really clear.
New updates
January was a very intensive month for my collection – I got about 100 new covers for different subjects. Some of them are “high-end” like 5 flown covers from the last ISS missions and one of the MIR, others are very simple like Cosmonautics day special cancellations for 1970s and 1980s. Though not very exciting but still they were missing and I’ve been gradually filling the gaps. I also got about a dozen Sergey Chizhov cachets some of them are really state of art and quite rare. So I carry on and in March there will be another 100 waiting for me in Russia.
