A Detailed Study of Complete Booklets And Modern Singles

Over a year ago, I bought at auction a shoebox of modern mint Sweden in glassines, and in November 2023 I bought a large accumulation of booklets. Now, I am passionate about modern issues because I believe they are the future of the hobby. It is not too outrageous when you stop to consider that all of the classic issues that so many enjoy studying and collecting are only as enjoyable as they are because the body of literature exists to allow collectors to really understand the significance of what they have. Those works exist because long dead philatelists who lived 80, 90, 100 or 110 plus years ago meticulously studied these stamps when they were current and readily available for a reasonable sum. Most, if not all of those works could not be replicated today by the average philatelist, because the cost of the stamps is so high that they would have to be very wealthy to afford the number required to form a study large enough to draw statistically valid conclusions from. In my view then, the time to study the modern material is right now, while it is still available, and still affordable.

With this attitude in mind, I set about studying the material and getting it ready to list in this week's auction, which closes on Wednesday night this week. Much to my surprise, in addition to the detail that is listed in Facit, there is so much that is not listed, like tagging variations, differences in the paper fluorescence of the covers and the markings that appear in the booklet tabs. One surprising thing that came out of it was that because Swedish booklets used the same printing presses that BABN used to print many stamps of the 1967-1972 Centennial definitives, that it is worth re-examining these, in light of the new information learned from studying the variations in the Swedish booklets and singles. 

Here are some pictures of some of the items I found while lotting this week. 


































I'd be interested to know what people's comments are, or questions. I'm not on this forum much, so if you have comments and can put them in an e-mail to me, I'd appreciate it. 

Cheers, 
Chris McFetridge
Philately First!