Page 90 - The Appollo Story

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Apollo 15 (AS-510) Hadley Rille
Insurance Covers: The Apollo insurance covers are autographed postal covers signed by the astronauts
prior to their mission. The astronauts were unable to afford life insurance for their risky Moon mission, so
they signed hundreds of postal covers before they left, in the understanding that they would become
highly valuable in the event of their death.
They started with Apollo 11 (three types) and continued on until the Apollo 16 lunar voyage, however,
there were for various missions more than one type of insurance-type cover:
Apollo 12 (only one design, which was the first of the exclusive "astronaut pin" cachet design)
Apollo 13 (two types)
Apollo 14 (two types overall)
Apollo 15 (two main designs, but others done unofficially)
Apollo 16 (only one)

AMERICAN
REVOLUTION
BICENTENNIAL
1776-1976

The main insurance covers as seen in the one above are unique, in that their cachet design (a crew patch/
mission emblem cachet with various insignia at the bottom, such as Astronaut Wings) was used ONLY
for insurance covers for Apollo's 12 through to 16 and not made available to collectors - generally.

Insurance covers were not done officially and were done mainly by a stamp club in Houston for each
Apollo crew and were handled by that stamp club ("Manned Spacecraft Center Stamp Club," as seen on
some of the "secondary" insurance covers) and then the astronaut families kept the covers while the mis-
sion was underway.
After they returned safely, the covers were stored away or dispersed in various ways and no "official" re-
cord was kept, especially by NASA, which had really little or nothing to do with them. They may have
given their official okay for the astronauts to create them, but they were just something that the astronaut
crews did themselves with much help from the MSCSC.