Finland 1929 White Paper Issue

Does anyone know anything about this issue?

It seems to rank among the most valuable of Finnish stamps, yet it doesn't appear to be listed in Scott.

Take a look at this Finnish auction webpage, which is fortunately available in English:

http://www.stamps.fi/huutokauppa.ph...hite%20paper

Funny it's not in Scott (pretty much every other catalog I know has it listed either as major number or variant...)

It's a late print with unique characteristics and extremely short usage period. Common and cheap in mint condition; used copies are very few...

The stamp can by identified from previous prints by direction of fibers. When moistured lightly (breathe few times towards the stamp), the stamp will bend along the short sides; the previous (1925) unwatermarked print will bend along the long slides.

Catalog price applies only for used copies with legimit date and location. Most of the stamps on the market don't qualify this (neat corner cancel = CTO or forgery, smudgy/unclear cancel = forgery), and they sell substantially less (about the same or bit more as mint; anybody would be fool to pay more).

In Facit, I think it's the 1929-30 Definitive without watermark.

The stamps on the auction page, the pictured ones are 1 mark and 10 mark, which are no. 143 and 146, and worth 4500 and 3800 swedish kronor respectively used, considerably higher than the rest of the 'common' stamps. Varieties are more expensive for the watermark stamps issued earlier but this seems to be the normal stamps that are valued the most used.

The orange 1 mark stamp was issued 10.09.1930 and with a print of 1.3 million. Apparently 44,253 were sold in 1930.
The brown/black 10 mark stamp was issued 16.11.1929 with 96,000 printed and only 3,133 sold between 1929-30.

This series was invalidated on 01.01.1931.

Thanks for the information, scb, AndrewF31!