Prestige books, what prestige?
The issuance of so-called prestige booklets flooded the world of stamp collectors. It is generally accepted that the first Prestige Stamp Book was issued by the British Post, the Royal Mail, on 1 December 1969, with the title: Stamps for Cooks. The price of this booklet was £1, a substantial sum for that time.
The cover featured a tasty fried haddock with tomato slices in a small dish. The contents of the booklet consisted of three sheets of standard Queen Elizabeth postage stamps with a margin containing cooking recipes. The print run of the booklet was 385.750 copies, but it came in two versions: sewn and bound. The print run of the latter version was only 10.848 copies and is a sought-after item!
This booklet can be considered a 'precursor', as the official first Prestige Stamp Book did not appear until May 24, 1972, featuring advertising from Wedgwood, the famous pottery factory founded in 1759 by Josiah Wedgewood in Stoke-on-Trent. Things moved a bit faster after that, starting in 1980. That year, too, saw a book of stamps and story from Wedgewood, published on April 16, 1980. It was slightly more expensive, though: £3.
The price of the booklets kept rising. Collectors loved them, so why not? In 1982, 1983, and 1984, a booklet cost £4, and by 1985, it was already £5. They kept this up for a few years.
In 1991, the price rose to £6. The Isambard Kingdom Brunel booklet sold for £7,50 in 2006. It is true, the booklets have varied content, with lots of information and many stamps. Isn't it a shame to repurpose such booklets simply to remove the stamps for postage? And what about the ratio of stamp content to the selling price? As an example, consider the £5 booklet from The Scots Connection. It contains four pages of stamps: 11 14P stamps, 15 19P stamps, and 1 23P stamp. Total £4,62. Real Scottish stamps!
But nowhere does the word PRESTIGE appear. What does that refer to? An invention of a collector or dealer? Or perhaps of the British postal service? Other countries have faithfully adopted the term PRESTIGE. According to Van Dale, Prestige means authority, esteem based on real or perceived achievements or capabilities. What is the connection? What does PRESTIGE mean?
The cover featured a tasty fried haddock with tomato slices in a small dish. The contents of the booklet consisted of three sheets of standard Queen Elizabeth postage stamps with a margin containing cooking recipes. The print run of the booklet was 385.750 copies, but it came in two versions: sewn and bound. The print run of the latter version was only 10.848 copies and is a sought-after item!
This booklet can be considered a 'precursor', as the official first Prestige Stamp Book did not appear until May 24, 1972, featuring advertising from Wedgwood, the famous pottery factory founded in 1759 by Josiah Wedgewood in Stoke-on-Trent. Things moved a bit faster after that, starting in 1980. That year, too, saw a book of stamps and story from Wedgewood, published on April 16, 1980. It was slightly more expensive, though: £3.
The price of the booklets kept rising. Collectors loved them, so why not? In 1982, 1983, and 1984, a booklet cost £4, and by 1985, it was already £5. They kept this up for a few years.
In 1991, the price rose to £6. The Isambard Kingdom Brunel booklet sold for £7,50 in 2006. It is true, the booklets have varied content, with lots of information and many stamps. Isn't it a shame to repurpose such booklets simply to remove the stamps for postage? And what about the ratio of stamp content to the selling price? As an example, consider the £5 booklet from The Scots Connection. It contains four pages of stamps: 11 14P stamps, 15 19P stamps, and 1 23P stamp. Total £4,62. Real Scottish stamps!
But nowhere does the word PRESTIGE appear. What does that refer to? An invention of a collector or dealer? Or perhaps of the British postal service? Other countries have faithfully adopted the term PRESTIGE. According to Van Dale, Prestige means authority, esteem based on real or perceived achievements or capabilities. What is the connection? What does PRESTIGE mean? 
Prestige..., for the postal service perhaps?
“Prestige” is an anagram of “pestig”. Perhaps a typo??
'@Cees
You yourself already indicate how many stamps you get for your money with the English booklets.
Regarding the Dutch P booklets, a TPG marketer was at work who naturally conducted market research and discovered that 9.95 is readily accepted by a Dutch audience that pays more attention to the accompanying text than to the stamps—non-philatelists, in other words! An attempt to enter into a discussion with the high-ranking gentleman and make it clear to him that philatelists would not be very happy yielded nothing—the research was sound and it wasn't about philatelists—so that's the end of the matter…. Thank you, TPG/TNTPost!
First-day cards and first-day papers were expensive collector's items in the 70s and 80s; now they are gone. The same will probably happen to the P-books. If they aren't bought anymore, they won't be made anymore.
First-day cards and first-day papers were not expensive, certainly not in comparison with the prestige booklets. First-day papers such as Importa and Visje are still being published; the circulation of these products has decreased by just as much as that of the first-day envelopes.
People are really comparing apples and oranges. P-booklets are stamps in a specific format; everything else, like FDC etc., is just tinkering with stamps. But the folders too.
Having said that, it must unfortunately be noted that, for the sake of this crafting, specially adapted versions of stamps are also produced that do not exist in their original forms, such as blocks, sheets, sheets, and booklets [whether hanging or not, self-adhesive or not].
These versions of stamps – the best known being the fully die-cut ones or the separate perforations of the business stamps – deserve to be given their own place separate from where they were taken [folders, FDCs].
Relatively unknown, for example, are the Charity stamps held together by small fasteners on FDC!
It is a pity that the P booklets ended up in the NVPH catalog. To remain complete, one therefore almost has to buy them regardless of the price. Furthermore, the stamps contained within have a different perforation, meaning there is a genuine variant.
In my view, TNT Post is a rip-off, and the creation of a non-standard stamp variant reinforces this impression. The price is completely absurd. That 9,95 is almost three times the nominal value of the stamp itself. As if 6 euros were the printing costs. Nonsense, you could print an entire Yellow Pages for that…
‘@Eric
The P-booklets are pure rip-off, but we encounter that quite often in philately.
The stamps included can be used for postage and are therefore normal postage stamps, albeit in a limited edition but readily available. You are free to collect them, but a respectable catalogue cannot avoid including them because it is not possible to tighten the criteria—which the NVPH, in all democracy, disregards—to such an extent that they have to be excluded.
All backdoor stamps fall just as well within the unwritten criteria and deserve to receive main numbers, even though there have been about 200 of them over the last two years. The Netherlands isn't at 3000 main numbers yet, but a rubbish area like the North Antilles is already at 1750, or Aruba at 375. Real countries like Belgium are at 3800, Austria is at 2700, Poland at 4100... so we're not doing too badly. And all that whining about the catalog being too thick??? Belgium still holds the African territories in high regard too!
It is a pity, then, that the NVPH is getting its own, shared, P-booklet in 2008. Would this booklet actually be catalog-worthy?
Perhaps a different perforation or printing technique?
Who says you HAVE to buy those things?
I don't need to be complete to collect stamps. That is precisely the art of collecting: patience, waiting, and more patience.
Scratch-off stamps? I didn't buy a single one, but together with family, I managed to complete the series, and on envelopes at that.