Canada #S76 P(52c) Multicolored Reindeer, 2007 Santa Letter Writing Program, A VF Special Cover, Only 10,000 Produced

A VF special cover of the p(52c) multicolored Reindeer from the 2007 Santa Letter Writing Program, only 10,000 produced.

Unitrade values this at $5. The cover offered here grades 80.

The first day covers issued after 2000 have become increasingly scarce as the years have progressed, as Canada Post has drastically reduced production of them. According to data in the Chung & Narbonnne Catalogue in 2000 the average issue quantity was approximately 40,000 of each issue and 22,000 additional covers with inscription blocks. By 2007, which is the most up to date version of this catalogue that I have, those quantities had fallen to 26,000 and 5,400 respectively. I am confident that they have only continued to decline, though perhaps not as sharply as they did in the early 2000's. Whatever the case may be, it is clear that there is actual, genuine scarcity to first day covers now, especially those with inscription blocks, as the quantities just mentioned for those cover all four positions, so that the number available for a particular position, is less than 1/4 of the total in several cases. Envelopes are generally all on either high fluorescent (HF) or hibrite (HB) paper. Also, Canada Post has not produced OFDC's for many of the issue formats, so that quite often they will not produce an FDC for the souvenir sheet, but will only do it for the booklet stamps, or vice versa. Alternatively they will issue an FDC or a set of FDC's for the stamps from these souvenir sheets, but just not the intact sheet itself. However, there are privately produced covers in existence that were produced by forward thinking philatelists who took large envelopes to the philatelic counters on the day of issue and had such items cancelled. These are, as one can imagine, very scarce - much, much scarcer than anything like this that came out of the 1930's when collecting FDC's was more popular than it is today.