(RCSD) Looking Back #188 - Booklets

Booklets

Luxemburg was the first country to adopt the practice
of selling stamps in handy booklets in 1895, and the
idea was soon taken up in many other countries.

[The booklet had four panes of six 5c stamps
(Adolphe profile - 1895 issue)
http://stamps.luxcentral.com/booklets/1.jpg
This was the first stamp booklet ever issued in the world. ]

In Great Britain, booklets were introduced in 1904;
they were the first to be interleaved with pages of
commercial advertising. Nowadays booklet
collecting has become a popular philatelic sideline;
some of the early booklets have become items of
considerable rarity, and fetch high prices.

British stamps intended for booklets come from
special printing in a make-up of opposed panes,
one of which is inverted in relation to the other.

In cases of faulty assembly this has occasionally
resulted in tête-bêche varieties. It also means
that half the stamps from booklets have inverted
watermarks. The process of manufacture often
results in the outer edges of booklet panes
having trimmed perforations, giving certain stamps
the appearance of being imperf. along one side.

An earlier production than any of the above was an
advertising booklet with a Penny Lilac inserted
through a slot in the cover, prepared in England by a
private company with Post Office approval in 1891.
It was intended for sale from vending machines fixed
to pillar boxes, but the experiment was short-lived.
This has been claimed as the world's first booklet,
but it was not a true stamp booklet in the accepted
meaning of the term, which implies panes of stamps
bound into the booklet by stapling or stitching.

- R. J. Sutton 6th edition revised by K. W. Anthony
The Stamp Collector's Encyclopaedia
Published 1966