1950s Tasmania £3 "T" perfin stamp booklet

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1950s Tasmania £3 "T" perfin stamp booklet

Post by Greg Ioannou »

I bought this from Koala a couple of years ago, and have puzzled over it ever since.

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Image

It has 18 x 4d; 36 x 6d, and 36 x 1/- (for a total face value of £3, if my mental math is right), all perfinned T.

Some of the perfins are 5 holes horizontally and 5 vertically; others are 5 H and 4 V.

(Sorry about the hair on the first scan! The horizontal line is from the Hagner sheet I keep it in.)

Any ideas what it is?

Greg
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Post by ozstamps »

I hope the £150 pencil price was not what you paid? ;)
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Post by ozstamps »

I am guessing the 6d and 1/- were Kookas and Lyres?

So we are talking ~50 year old.

Yep £3 is face.

State perfins booklets of any era are unheard of - AFAIK.

What troubles me is the evidence of a 3rd staple on top margin that is no longer there, and yet no sign of it on back. Hence some kind of re-make has occurred - 50 years ago - or later.
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Post by GlenStephens »

The one thing that is worth noting is that blocks of state perfins are not common, most especially WA and T.

So if someone created this it would be darn near impossible to assemble the stamps all with top margins posthumously.
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Post by Greg Ioannou »

Yes, kookas and lyres. (One of the panes of lyres is in upside-down. An error booklet!) And I paid nothing resembling £150 for it. I bought it because it was unusual and selling cheaply.

I'm also troubled by the evidence that it has been re-assembled. I haven't checked to see if that hole affects the other panes, but I presume that it does.

But ... why would it exist at all?

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Post by Greg Ioannou »

You said in another thread that you'd visited Ross Ewington? Could you invite him to join the discussion?

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Post by gavin-h »

:idea: I'd guess that this is a one-off item that some state employee made up for their own use within the office.
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Post by koala »

Yes I remember to that "booklet", it comes from a large collection which I got near Munich/Germany from a collector who bought everything "unusual" and....... yes - he paid the 150 pounds for that booklet!!!

But I have no idea from which UK dealer he got it - sorry
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Post by fromdownunder »

gavin-h wrote::idea: I'd guess that this is a one-off item that some state employee made up for their own use within the office.
This would surprise me actually. I can only speak for Victoria, but all VG perfins had to be ordered through the Government Printing Office, by the sheet, and I do not recall booklet orders ever being valid. The Government Printing Office would certainly have maintained Audit trails of everything they perfined.

Sheets seemed to be just thrown at the perfin machine(s), so inverted, reversed, se-tenants with different shapes, and all sorts of wierd combinations of VG stamps can exist.

I can certainly confirm that in Victoria at least, there were no perfin machines within individual Government Offices.

It may be possible to contact the Public Records Office of the State involved and do some historical research as to the existance of State Perfin Booklet Stamps, but I suspect it would be a very time consuming and arduous process.

Personally, I would question the validity of perfined booklet stamps. Which is also not to say that they do not exist.

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Post by GlenStephens »

koala wrote:
and ....... yes - he paid the 150 pounds for that booklet!!!
OUCH!
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Post by GlenStephens »

Greg Ioannou wrote:You said in another thread that you'd visited Ross Ewington? Could you invite him to join the discussion?

Greg
Yes we sat in his Hobart office and looked at stampboards on his massive flat screen monitor and have not seem him post.

I'll pass this thread on to him to see if he has anything to add!

He would know if anyone does. 8)

I'll also phone Arthur Gray and see what he might know. He has the finest OZ booklet collection existing. :idea:
Last edited by GlenStephens on 07 Nov 2007 13:08, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Greg Ioannou »

And you imagine I'd sell it for less than that?

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Post by GlenStephens »

There now seems little doubt that £1 1927 1½d Canberra booklets were issued much like this kind of format. i.e. a rough cover with stamps stapled to it.

Much has not been written on booklets yet despite their being a stand alone ACSC volume on them.
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t booklet

Post by A-One Stamps »

Looks like private make up. Cant imagine any State Pinter being so untidy.

Curio department!
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Re: t booklet

Post by fromdownunder »

A-One Stamps wrote:Looks like private make up. Cant imagine any State Pinter being so untidy.

Curio department!
You should see some of what what was delivered to me! I think, at times, they used new junior staff who did not have a clue to perf stamps for official use.

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Post by GlenStephens »

I have other more major problem with these. What might it have been intended for?

The 4d letter rate came in on Oct 1 1956.

This 4d was issued March 13, 1957, so this 'booklet' was clearly made after that date.

So WHY the 6d and 1/- values in this booklet?

Let us ask ourselves was there any real need for 36 x 6d .. TWICE the amount of stamps versus the letter rate stamp?

The ACSC says that 6d was a popular rate up until September 30, 1956, where it was the 2nd weight step within Australia and Empire. THEREAFTER it reverted simply to make up use. (The 6½d Orange QE2 became the heavy used 2nd weight step.)

So given this booklet can't have been made up until at least March, that was 6 months AFTER the 6d value had any real use. Why?
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Post by Greg Ioannou »

And using the same logic, the 1/- no wmk lyre bird was issued 31 October 1956 and pretty much used for parcels.

Who needs 36 parcel stamps in a booklet?

(On the other hand, that stamp catalogues $5 never hinged, and the booklet has 36 of those, all perfed T.

They have to be scarce MNH.)

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Post by fromdownunder »

I hope I am stating the obvious here, but weren't all booklet panes 2 x 3? So that these are simply sheet stamps that somebody has stapled into a couple of bits of card?

I am thinking that perhaps some nice staff member put this together for a local MP who was about to go walkabout and wanted a wallet sized group of stamps for urgent mail that he (it would have been a he back then - I am not being sexist) might need to use during his travels.

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Post by GlenStephens »

Greg .. you did not specify .. are the 6d and 1/- Wmk or no wmk?

You are saying NO wmk for the 1/- it seems?
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Post by Greg Ioannou »

I stupidly hadn't looked at that. The 6d is wmk, the 1/- isn't.

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Post by GlenStephens »

Had a long chat to Arthur Gray tonight and he has never heard of such a thing. Other than the 10/- 1927 Canberra booklets (not the £1 I posted above from memory!)

His view is akin with mine that it might have been assembled by a tidy clerk aimed at keeping the postage stamps all in one place.

At a police station, school or hospital etc - all places who used state perfins.

Ross Ewington emailed me to say he does not think it is anything official, but that the stamp themselves are scarce as T perfins in blocks!

"...it could be an unofficial production but it is unlikely that accounting practices at the time would have allowed mint stamps to "leave the office" ....... so ...... I wouldn't even award it that "status"."
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Post by Greg Ioannou »

The tidy clerk theory makes some sense, but doesn't really answer everything. Why would the clerk put so many rarely used denominations in the booklet? Why make the face value exactly £3? And how did it ever get out of the office and onto the market?

Another possibility is that is may be some sort of sample. Perhaps someone trying to show that booklets of perfinned stamps may be a convenient way to distribute stamps to police stations and such?

And none of the above answers the question about the rusty staple hole.

I'm convinced that, whatever it is, it is at some level genuine. I'm sure the perfins are genuine -- and as Ross points out, unused blocks of those are really hard to come by.

Anyway, why would anyone fake something that obscure and strange?

Of course, we'll never know.

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Post by GlenStephens »

Greg if I can get a new scan ASAP of inside I'll run this in my next column.

Could I bother you to re-do it please ASAP high rez, and with a normal Hagner or black background - not the split down the centre one please? (and no hair if possible!)

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Post by Greg Ioannou »

Thanks!

There you go. Higher res, no line, no hair.

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Post by admin »

Thanks Greg .. please email scan to me direct please as it might be sharper still that way. 8)

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Post by ozstamps »

Here we go - now in print .. let's see if any more info results from this!

http://www.glenstephens.com/sndecember07.html
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Re: 1950s Tasmania £3 "T" perfin stamp booklet

Post by Global Admin »

I am still curious about this Tasmania booklet .. has always intrigued me.

Any further comment from anyone?
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Re: 1950s Tasmania £3 "T" perfin stamp booklet

Post by fromdownunder »

Global Administrator wrote:I am still curious about this Tasmania booklet .. has always intrigued me.

Any further comment from anyone?
Glen, only my original hypothesis
I am thinking that perhaps some nice staff member put this together for a local MP who was about to go walkabout and wanted a wallet sized group of stamps for urgent mail that he might need to use during his travels.
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Re: 1950s Tasmania £3 "T" perfin stamp booklet

Post by Greg Ioannou »

You inspired me to dig the booklet out and look at it again -- specifically at the extra staple hole. When you look at it closely, there is a mark where a third staple has gone through only the first couple of sheets, but not penetrated the booklet completely. So presumably the clerk discarded that staple and whacked in another one.

And there's a pattern to the perfins. The 4d stamps are all 4 hole/5 hole, whereas the other two values are all 5/5.

Back it goes into my binder of oddities, to be forgotten for another few years.

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Re: 1950s Tasmania £3 "T" perfin stamp booklet

Post by jugoslavija_post »

Greg Ioannou wrote:You inspired me to dig the booklet out and look at it again -- specifically at the extra staple hole. When you look at it closely, there is a mark where a third staple has gone through only the first couple of sheets, but not penetrated the booklet completely. So presumably the clerk discarded that staple and whacked in another one.
It doesn't appear to go through the cover, to my eyes? :?:
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Re: 1950s Tasmania £3 "T" perfin stamp booklet

Post by Greg Ioannou »

jugoslavija_post wrote:
It doesn't appear to go through the cover, to my eyes? :?:
No, it only goes through the first couple of panes of stamps.

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Re:

Post by mickeyfinn »

Greg Ioannou wrote:The tidy clerk theory makes some sense, but doesn't really answer everything. Why would the clerk put so many rarely used denominations in the booklet? Why make the face value exactly £3? And how did it ever get out of the office and onto the market?
I too have thought about this 'booklet' over the past few years but my opinion remains unchanged .....

That is, that the 'booklet' was produced unofficially, albeit by an employee of a Tasmanian government department. The 'tidy clerk' theory is realistic in my opinion as it may just have been a way of storing stamps which were no longer in common use.

e.g. it was manufactured after the standard letter rate was increased to 5d in 1959 ... there wouldn't have been much use at the time for the 6d and 1/- values except for "make up rate" purposes.

I believe that the total value of the stamps included being equal to exactly £3 is just coincidence and that the reason for there being evidence of a "third staple" is not really worth pursuing as to me it just indicates that the stamps have been previously 'stored' using the same means (but not with the same cover)

In other words, it's just a "one of" with no particular philatelic significance ....... however, the good news about the rarity of MNH defins perf T in multiples continues as they are still being eagerly sought by specialist perfin collectors.

Footnote: with the introduction of decimal currency in 1966, these stamps were demonetized and could have then been transferred 'from office to collector' without any law being broken.
For information about Tasmanian stamps, postal history, postmarks, revenues, postcards, etc. visit the Tasmanian Philatelic Society Website at http://tps.org.au
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Re: Re:

Post by Greg Ioannou »

mickeyfinn wrote: That is, that the 'booklet' was produced unofficially, albeit by an employee of a Tasmanian government department. The 'tidy clerk' theory is realistic in my opinion as it may just have been a way of storing stamps which were no longer in common use.

<snip>

Footnote: with the introduction of decimal currency in 1966, these stamps were demonetized and could have then been transferred 'from office to collector' without any law being broken.
Makes sense. They were no longer in common use, so a clerk stored away £3 of them in a tidy little booklet for use when those denominations were needed again. As shown by the fact the booklet was never used, they were never again needed. And some collector took it home after 1966 when it became legal to do so.

That connects all the dots.

It may be total fiction, but it makes sense of everything we know.

Greg
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