Small hoard of pre-decimal booklets for sale

There is always something unexpected lurking in a cupboard, and today it's a group of pre-decimal booklets.  

Examples of the booklets found

These booklets were made up from special printings of stamps (and interleaving information pages and covers) usually arranged in se-tenant columns which were assembled in order, then stitched, and guillotined.

As with the very earliest Prestige Stamp books (Stamps for Cooks, Wedgwood) this meant that the perforations were where the guillotine was supposed to fall.  Consequently most of the stamp panes had the perforations to some extent trimmed, as this 10p decimal pane.

If you were lucky, and new the sub-postmaster well, you could examine all the stock for these booklets and pick out the good ones.  Sadly this group did not get that benefit and most are trimmed to a greater or lesser degree.

The SG Concise Catalogue numbers and booklet values are as follows:

4/6    L67p, L69p, LP45, LP46, LP47, LP49, LP51, LP54.  Numbers 46-54 have pictorial covers showing ships

5/-    H74, HP36, HP27, HP31, HP34.  These have illustrated covers (34 - Philympia)

6.-    QP40, QP42 (October & November), QP45

10/-    X16p, XP4, XP6, XP7 (4-7 show Explorers)

Also included are nice clean examples of the experimental machine-vended booklets:

1/- E1 (blankcover, vertical pairs of stamps with Tudor watermark and no interleaving), K2 & K3 St Edwards and Multiple Crown watermarks respectively, and 2/- N2 with all inverted watermarks..

Also represented the so-called 'Holiday Booklets' with contents aimed at holiday-makers posting postcards at the 2½d rate, and having at least one pane with se-tenant 2½d and ½d stamps.

A glance at the catalogue reveals that many of these are very common, especially the early booklets costing only 1 or 2 shillings (5/10p).

The best of the bunch are H74 catalogued at £32 but with mixed perforations, L67p cat £17 which is trimmed at the top, and L79p catalogued £12 each (2 examples one of which has ll panes with inverted watermarks.) 

Priced individually at £55, all thirty-two for £50 post paid.  And some booklet wrappers thrown in for free - these might be scarcer than some of the booklets!  A full list describing the state of the perforations from Good to mixed to poor, is available - please ask.

Leave a comment below if interested and email me at the usual address.

If you particularly want any individual booklets but not the lot, then send an email and we wil hold these until we decide that nobody wants the whole group.

 
(Also available some early independent Channel Islands booklets - please let me know if interestd.)

 

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