Makeshift Vending Machine Booklets

eyeonwall: good catch there with the BK227 typo. Mike Perry and I were able to buy the collection of Dave Otto who was a legendary MDI booklet hunter. He had in his rarities a BK227 with backward pane (and two "false" pane/cover combos). So there were a few BK227 assembled with backward panes and the described item could be genuine. But it would need close examination to check if the gum was tampered with (or if there was no gum applied initially and someone intentionally glued in the pane backwards). My guess is the final inspection at MDI only counted if the correct number of books were produced so errors/freaks inside a pile of books were not discovered - or simply noone cared as the "numbers were right".

As MDI is completely unresponsive to questions, we do not know what instructional procedures and safeguards were in place when the booklets were hand-assembled. From the available "freak stuff" we can deduce that honest mistakes had been made (when reducing 20 stamp sheet panes to 15 stamp panes for use in the MDI covers for example, pulling away the wrong row/column of surplus stamps).

I dont think it is possible to simply "refold" a regularly glued pane to show it backwards in the window. it has to be lifted and reglued which would show suspicious traces. (Though I have to think about that one....)

Yes, I did make a mistake in the number, it was actually BK227. In fact that whole sentence has some issues. I should have read it better before posting.
Thanks for your insight on these odd MDI booklets.

Here's another variety of the Dolls MDI booklet. In this case, the folded pane was glued at the bottom of the cover.



And here's a pane taken from a booklet and unfolded. This pane came from a booklet that had the Martha Chase doll in the white dress showing through the window in the cover (4th stamp in top row). As there were only 15 stamps per pane of Dolls, the varieties are due to differences in folding and attachment point. In the illustrated pane, you can see the glue spot above the plate number. Drkohler's booklet that shows the American Child doll, with the red hat and overcoat, is unusual in showing a stamp from the rightmost column in the pane.

Since MDI employed disabled workers, one wonders if some of the varieties were created simply because it was easier for the disabled worker to tear from a certain side or fold in a particular way. That could explain the white dress dolls or the crocodiles (endangered species) which while not the most common are relatively common compared to some other varieties. Some of the others are harder to explain. A worker who was bored or ornery?

I have some 2 pane booklets with the top pane upside down (inverted, not face down).

philatomic: That is a variety I have not seen before. Correctly glued into the cover, your booklet would be the booklet on the right of my five examples.
I often wonder how many unrecorded varieties still lurk in collections...

eyeonwall: I sometimes think there might have been a part-time anarchist assembling some booklets in intentionally wrong ways. Most likely, the instruction "Tear away the left column of stamps" can easily go wrong if the sheet was unintentionally rotated by 180 degrees in front of the worker(s) - or the instructions were simply too imprecise.

Again, since MDI does not answer questions, we'll never know how in what ways these books were assembled. There are issues with zero varieties and there are issues with many varieties. The appearance of varieties is also not tied to a time frame, early as well as late issues have varieties caused by the same goofs.

Here is an example of one of the weird & wonderful MDI varieties. It is an American Glass pane glued wrong side out.



Many years ago I saw a similar one (another collector beat me to it, but I think it may have been a Tropical Birds booklet).

A few years ago I saw an Endangered Species booklet misfolded like your MDI booklet. It was in a bulky ebay lot of around 50 books so I passed the lot. In hindsight I should have bitten the bullet, this stuff is really rare.