55 lire Milan Triennial Art Exhibition
Sassone 667
Postwar Kingdom Issues <<-- : -->> Trieste Zone A
Two stamps were issued on 23rd July 1951 to commemorate The Triennial Art Exhibition held in Milan.
The 55 lire is one of the scarcer post-war commemoratives, and comes with two orientations of the Type 1 Winged Wheel watermark. The more common is CS (inverted, wing to left, viewed from the back of the stamp), while the ND version (upright, wing to right) is somewhat scarcer in mint condition.
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55 lire Milan Triennial Art Exhibition
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There are several varieties of the Syracuse Coin stamps (called Italia Turrita in Italian Catalogues). First they came out with Winged Wheel Type 3 watermarks in 1953.
Type 3 Winged Wheel, ND orientation |
Then they were issued with Stars watermarks from 1955
Type 1 (distinct) |
Type 2 65°S |
Finally they came out with a smaller design on fluorescent paper in 1968
The original stars watermarked paper Types 1 and 4 had the stars pointing horizontally as in the diagram above, except for the 100 and 200 lire, and experimental coils of 10l, 15l and 30l (plus 25l for Type 1) where they point vertically. Type 2 coils are also known with the angle of the stars different.
Numerals on the back of coil stamps
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There are various colours of fluorescence ranging from deep yellow through cream to a blue-white colour, but one of the scarcest issues of this set is the 100 lire printed on non-fluorescent Type 2 stars paper intended for fiscal stamps.
100 lire small design type, Type 2 25°S stars, non-fluorescent paper |
The following is an imperforate block of 4 of the 150 lire. Sadly, it is not thought that this stamp was issued at a Post Office, so it has a questionable status and is quite common.
150 lire small design type, imperforate block of 4 |
The Italian Road Safety issue of 1957 comes in two main types. The black of the outline of the traffic lights is created by the simultaneous printing of the red and green.
In the first printing the red went up to the edge of the design, but any misalignment would produce a red edge to the lights.
In subsequent printings the red was reduced in size so that the black areas of the traffic lights appear, on close examination, to have green outlines.
The left hand side shows the modified printing (Sassone 815), the right hand side the original (Sassone 815/I) |
On 14th October 1976 a set of five stamps was issued in connection with the International stamp fair 'Italia 76'
This stamp is a corner marginal copy showing some of the border inscription and the cross-hairs used to check the printing alignment.
200 lire, showing a manual cancelling machine
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On 22nd May 1992 a set of six miniature sheets was issued in connection with the 5th Centenary of the 'Discovery' of America by Christopher Columbus.
Some of the sheets which contained the 600 lire value had COLOMBG instead of COLOMBO due to a flaw.
Miniature sheet with the error
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600 lire value with the error
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Detail of the error |
In the normal course of events parcel stamps are placed over the boundary between the parcel card and the receipt on the right, which is then separated. Thus used parcel stamps are generally found in halves. Italian collectors like their used examples to be intact pairs, and this Swiss parcel card demonstrates that there are occassions when genuine use (rather than a favour cancel) results in an unsplit pair.
In this case parcel stamps have been used to collect a fee of 1100 lire on a parcel from Switzerland. Note that although the value is given twice on each pair, this does not mean that this is the amount paid for each half.
Swiss parcel card |
Postwar Kingdom Issues <<-- :
-->> Trieste Zone A
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