Canada / Sweden 2010 Marine Life Booklet Varieties

I have been to the Post Office and recorded occurences, in order, of the control numbers and Blue numbers 1 and 2 and booklet counting tabs, black and gray. But I am tired so will have to leave to recounting of them to tomorrow.

I also want to make a table or listing of all the numbers and marks recorded here and on Adminware so far and show it all in one post for clarity's sake.

So stay tuned! Further new discoveries to be unveiled shortly.

Counting Tab Varieties Darkness and position:
(These are the ones I have myself.)

The position of the tabs I name as being over a certain letter of Canada on the back cover. These are the booklets opened up and laid flat, front of booklet on top, back on bottom below the dashed perforation that is there to rip the booklets apart in case someone wished to buy just half a booklet.



I do not know if this is a colour change or rather less ink being applied to the booklet in the printing process.

Counting Tab Varieties darkened (Same as above but all consistently darkened to better show the very light tabs.)

To show that the ink is on both front and back and not just a transference from one inked booklet to another.

I would think that if one were collecting these that the darker, more fully applied ink varieties would appeal more and perhaps demand a higher market price also.

Seems mostly position D, A2 (reading Canada right-side up) and C, generalizing on the position and not getting too picky.

Nice show Puzzler. Did you find all those at one Post Office, and were they in fact 1 of 50, or 1 of 25? I only found one in the pack of 50 I saw, but of course could have missed an invisible one. Did any of yours have numbers on the inside?

The counting bars appear to be printed separately than the regular black colour and I am quite sure the fading is poor inking, not any gray colour.

Bee See, Three of the very light tabs had a Blue 2 inside on the selvedge. One dark tab had a 6-digit number.

The above eight tabs were not all from a 50 booklet bundle. Four were from a single pack of 25, the other pack in the bundle had only one tab. The other tabs were from different bundles.

That may be indicative but then again not as it could just mean that I only noticed the really dark tabs and there were some I missed at places before I realized from Adminware and your post that there were very light ones.

I think this under-inking may show the inking of the tab marking device in the printing process. Perhaps, depending on the pane or sheet layout on the press, as suggested by Londonbus1 earlier, once the inker was inked it was only good for a few or even one dark strike or pass and the following strikes were done with less and less ink on the hammer or brushes or whatever transferred the ink.

The layout of the sheet (a lot of booklets being possibly side by side so that in one row were say 9 booklets (picking a number out of the air), then the numbering sequence of the 6-digit control numbers would be slightly mixed up in the final band-wrapped 25 pack, also depending on how the booklets were gathered up after being cut apart.

Another factor perhaps (my ignorance of printing comes into play here) is the fact that these stamps are Lithography in 3 colours and 2 colours in intaglio, so perhaps this entailed them being transferred from one press to another and the Blue 1's and 2' being printed in one pass and the black numbers being printed in the next, or something along those lines.

A research into Swedish printing presses or methods would be in order here. The printer named is Swedish Post Stamps.

Please note that extra scans, darkened slightly to show the tabs more clearly, have been added to the post that is four posts above this one in sequence. Added this note in case readers missed the added info.

New update coming on Adminware site this weekend. will post link or copy and paste as needed.

Very interesting Puzzler. Robin has also reported finding more than 1 tab in a bundle of 25, and out of order control numbers in a bundle - just put up today on his site.

I was thinking about how the packs are assembled into 50 pack bundles. The 6-digit control numbers seem to be somewhat consecutive only within a pack of 25. The next pack of 25, whether bundled together with the first pack or not, does not seem to contain consecutive numbers, or the chance of it being so is slim or chancy.

This would seem to indicate that when packaged in the printing plant / office the packs of 25 were created and then these band-wrapped packs were tumbled through to a plastic wrapping device on the production line and whatever happened to show up was bundled together, ignoring the first printed, first bundled rule that our brains tend to think like. Humans like order.

Makes sense Puzzler. I think that the blue numbers refer to the printing layout before cutting into booklets, and perhaps the black control number represents 1 full uncut sheet. Maybe 10 panes of 8 stamps per sheet? A blue 1 and 2 and black control number somewhere on each sheet?

Perhaps column 1 and column 2 and then panes with control,numbers?

Maybe Canada Post will fly us to Sweden to investigate this important matter! It is helping to sell more stamps!

I like that Puzzler, could use a trip about now!

I was thinking that 1 and 2 column theory too. The only odd part is that the control number locations are not consistant...

The brown paper band wrapping of 25 booklets at a time and Then, down the line somewhere, the plastic wrapping of two 25-packs into a 50 booklet bundle would explain the numbers.

Each pack also does not have to have consecutive numbers. If each column, 1 or 2, had it's own control numbers then some column 1 booklets would be packaged with column 2 booklets with their own control numbers.

OR even if just one series of control numbers was used for all comuns or rows, how they were cut apart and then perhaps jumbled together or picked out of the line to be packaged into groups of 25 would explain the odd occurrences (seemingly) of the control numbers.

We are both reaching for an explanation without having any proofs yet I feel.

Perhaps an examination of other Swedish booklet printing processes and numbers would shed light on these.

Do NOT Watermark check these stamps!

I did (with watermark fluid, the real stuff) and the stamps are still a bit curled. Perhaps can be flattened out but it scared me non the less.

Oh, no watermarks.

Some Swedish stamps do have watermarks, so I was curious.

It's not a party until something is broke!

Halifax Post Office #1 . . . second bundle of 50
(Bundle of 50 unopened, 2 packs of 25, recorded in sequence of occurrence)

Pack #1 (of 25 bookets)
- (Blank, selvedge empty of any markings)
2 + Light Tab (Blue 2 on selvedge + counting tab on booklet cover)
- + Dark Tab
-
-

039867 (6-digit black control number on selvedge)
1 (Blue 1)
-
-
-

2 + Light Tab
045954
-
-
039866

1
-
-
-
-

2 + Light Tab
-
-
-
039865