Lot 30 Canada #BK38aF 1942-1947 War Issue, A Complete 25c French Booklet With 1c Green, 3c Rose Violet & Dark Carmine, Panes Of 3. Front Cover Vc, Back Cover Jviii, Type II Cover, 7c & 6c Rates, Short 1c Pane, 496,000 Issued

A complete 25c French booklet from the 1942-1947 War Issue with 1c green, 3c rose violet & dark carmine, panes of 3. Front cover Vc, back cover Jviii, type II cover. 7c & 6c rates. The 1c pane is almost 5 mm shorter than the other panes and upon closer examiniation it is apparent that this pane had either no selvedge tab, oe a very narrow none, so that the booklet staples very likely pass through the pane. An interesting production mishap. 496,000 issued. Minor fold on front cover along the staple. Unitrade values this booklet at $37.50 for the normal booklet. We do not recall ever seeing this type of variety. Therefore we estimate the value at $50.

The booklet offered here grades 78 as follows:

Centering/Margins: 50/70

Cover Freshness: 10/10

Condition of Cover Edges: 5/5

Freshness of the Panes: 5/5

Absence of Visible Cover Flaws or Stains: 3/5

Condition of Interleaving and Contents: 5/5

For the booklets from this issue, the quantities issued refer to the total number of booklets issued for all rate page types, all staple sizes and all Harris front and back cover types for a particular denomination of booklet in English or French. They come from the McCann catalogue, which does not break the quantity down into the individual varieties. Consequently, depending on how many listed types there are, many of these booklets are much, much scarcer than the overall issue quantities would suggest. For example, according to McCann, there were 699,000 English 25c booklets containing four panes of 6 1c green stamps issued. However, there were seven different basic rate-page and cover type combinations, not counting the Harris sub-types. If they were more or less evenly distributed among these types, that is just under 100,000 of each type, and then this gets broken down further into between 2 and 8 Harris sub-types each. So, this places these issue quantities into a more accurate perspective. This is even more acute in the case of the chewing gum booklets for both issues, as for the English booklets there were 16 possible cover combinations, while for the french there were 64, and still for the bilingual there were 225 possible combinations of front and back covers. Some of these are so rare that they have yet to be reported.