The Correspondence of the International Youth Organization in Finland

I have just purchased the remaining correspondence of the International Youth Organization in Finland from a private collector in Finland. This remarkable correspondence consists of some 50,000 pieces of mail sent from small villages throughout Nigeria to the organization in Turku, Finland. A good percentage of these envelopes are registered frankings featuring many scarcer definitives and commemoratives and scarcer combinations of lower value stamps. I started purchasing this accumulation in stages three years ago when my intention was to study the postmarks, rates and usages for my own collection.

To date, I had purchased about 20,000 of the covers from the period 1969-1985. The remaining 30,000 covers are from the period from about 1986 to the early 2000's. This covers the entire hyper-inflation period when the Kobo values became useless almost overnight and people were using 50 stamps to mail a letter.

If you were ever looking for an opportunity to specialize in postal history and form a large collection of scarcer material, this is it.

These covers are coming to me in 9 parcels over the course of the next two months. My plan is to sell them in large lots of between 100 and 500 covers each, covering various periods. I expect these lots to be popular and to sell out quickly, as I am going to offer them at very reasonable prices of between $0.25-$0.60 US per cover.

Please be sure to visit my store to peruse the listings as they appear. The first ones should appear in early March 2016. I will update this post with some scans when the covers arrive and I can pick out some representative covers to illustrate.

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