1959 Wonders of the Animal Kingdom

While looking for cool things to bust on here, I came across this little gem. From what I can tell, this is a 1959 Wonders of the Animal Kingdom stamp pack. These were sold in grocery stores in Canada, evidently. Each pack is numbered, as you can see from the front above. The packs themselves are paper and are very fragile after all these years, as you might imagine.

The backs of the packs list the stamp numbers found inside the selected pack. This is VERY handy for folks trying to collect the whole set. There are 20 stamps inside!

The stamps themselves are smaller than traditional baseball cards. These are about the size of 1975 Topps Mini, maybe. The front features some very detailed (and evidently hand-painted) renderings of the featured animal. You will notice that the set includes domestic and wild animals as well as creatures such as dinosaurs. The stamps are VERY thin! Each stamp is borderless and you can see many miscuts around the edges.

The backs feature the set name centered at the top in all-caps. This is followed by a paragraph describing the featured animal. Each description starts with the stamp number, the animal's name (in all-caps), the scientific name and then the description itself.

My understanding is that there are about 400 stamps in the whole collection. There was an album that went with the stamps as well. During my research, I came across a variety of pack designs, so it makes me wonder if these are all from the same promotion or if the promotion was an annual thing. I dunno. Either way, these are very cool vintage packs!