Xmas has just dropped over the horizon and 2024 has arrived. Santa’s supply drop brought some wonderful gifts as usual and included one or two space themed curiosities. Although the first of these arrived last Xmas and was technically pre-blog, it was joined this year by another unique item from my good friend and fellow collector, Arto, who lives in Finland. Arto sent me the above card in 2022, which was apparently a premium from ‘Rex’ brand coffee and is part of a small set of space themed collectors cards from Scandinavia. It’s almost impossible to find any information about them, let alone any extant cards!
This year Arto kindly sent me a lovely card premium from a Finnish gum series, no 116 of 120. It was a satellite themed set from the 60’s and this image shows the Convair Manned Lunar Reconnaissance Vehicle from 1958.
Convair designed a number of craft which used nuclear propulsion, the large fuel tanks held the hydrogen fuel and the reactor was placed as far from the crew compartment as possible, resulting in some extremely elongated vehicles.
Another small gift was a pack of Polish space thematic stamps. The first shows the Soviet Mars 1 probe, which was launched on November 1 1962. After a successful launch and trajectory set for the Red Planet, communication with the probe was abruptly lost, some weeks into the mission.
From the same series, comes a stamp showing the American Mariner 3 mission, which again was fated to be lost en route to Mars. Some weeks later, the almost identical Mariner 4 was launched, again in November, 1964. It became the first probe to make a close fly by and transmit photographs of the Martian terrain.
Along with the two Martian themed stamps, came a trio celebrating the Apollo/Soyuz linkup mission, with two stamps joining to show the successfully docked soviet and American capsules. A third stamp shows the main docking apparatus and connecting airlock.
A separate stamp commemorates the Apollo 11 moon landing and Neil Armstrong exploring the lunar surface and two final stamps show satellite coverage of the Montreal Winter Olympics and another space rocket themed issue.
