Booklet stamps
Stamp booklets are a study on their own. They were produced for the convenience of the public, and so they contained stamps which would make up the most frequently used postage rates - at this time 2½d for the first 2 oz for letters and 2d for postcards, 1½d for the first 4 ozs for printed paper etc. Many of them were on sale from machines. The covers changed from being plain cream card to different coloured covers for the different value booklets. The make-up of each booklet varied to make up the value. Many of the booklet stamps had the watermark inverted, because of the format used in the printing.
6d booklet
1/- booklet
Examples of some of the booklet covers showing different designs and information.Photo courtesy of the Post Office showing the printing layout for booklets July 1937, showing how the inverted watermarks occur.
The booklets contained advertisements as interleaves, and some stamp panes had postage information. The pane on the left is from a stitched booklet, and this has the cylinder number on the left hand margin. This particular pane was included in a booklet,issued in March 1952, of which all the other panes were Elizabethan Wilding stamps.
This pane of 4 stamps and two advert labels was from either the 1937 2/- or 5/- booklets, as it appeared in both of these.
The 5/- bookets series 8 was introduced in 1940 to replace the Series 5 booklets, as the minimum inland postage rate was increased from 1½d to 2½d. This booklet was the sixth change in the series and was issued in October 1950. The stamps were the pale colours, and there were no interleaves in it. All the panes, except that of the 2d stamps have the watermark inverted.
Introduction
definitive stamps
Definitive stamps inverted watermarks
High Value stamps
Coil stamps and leaders
Sheet markings
Stamps in booklets
Forces Mail and Airletters
Commemorative issues
Overprints
Wartime slogans
