Mercury Seven Signed Sheet of Project Mercury Stamps.

SCOTT CARPENTER, Gordon Cooper.

Item Number: 19052

Single sheet of fifty four-cent stamps signed by all of the Mercury Seven, as follows: Malcolm Scott Carpenter; Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr.; John Herschel Glenn, Jr.; Virgil Ivan “Gus” Grissom; Walter “Wally” Schirra, Jr.; Alan B. Shepard, Jr.; Donald “Deke” Slayton. The signatures of Shepard and Grissom are faded. Matted and framed opposite a copy of Life magazine featuring the Mercury Seven. Entire piece measures 20 inches by 26 inches. An attractive and desirable piece, signed by all of the Mercury Seven astronauts.

"The first seven American astronauts were an admirable group of individuals chosen to sit at the apex of a pyramid of human effort… They chose to lead by following the opportunity that chance, circumstance, technology and history had prepared for them" (Swenson, Grimwood & Alexander). NASA introduced the seven astronauts in Washington on April 9, 1959. Although the agency viewed Project Mercury's purpose as an experiment to determine whether humans could survive space travel, the seven men immediately became national heroes and were compared by TIME magazine to "Columbus, Magellan, Daniel Boone, and the Wright brothers" (TIME 1959).