Post Offices Abroad
Starting in the late Nineteenth Century, several countries had post offices in located in other countries. Many of these closed by the mid 1920s and all by the end of World War II. This is somewhat a strange concept for me, but it shouldn’t be since I collect U.N. stamps, which are issued by U.N. post offices located in host countries.
Although these post offices were permitted by the foreign nations where they were located, they were established because of a distrust of the local postal service. For Italian foreign post offices, they were meant to be used by Italian merchants and citizens living abroad. They were also used by Italian troops stationed there.
The stamps sold in these offices were primarily Italian definitives overprinted with the name of the country or city where they were located. For a few, they used stamps from the host country overprinted with the name and a face amount in Italian. For some, you could pay in the local currency – many were overprinted initially with that.
Note
This is a new section of my collection of Italian stamps. Italy had several foreign post offices that issued stamps: a few in the Austro-Hungarian Empire; a few in Greece, or at least Greek islands; many in the Ottoman Empire (e.g., Constantinople, Tripoli, Ljubljana); and China (e.g., Peking),
Although I use Leuchtturm (i.e., Lighthouse) stamp album pages, they don’t make pages for the Italian foreign post offices. So I design my own pages, and use their paper to print them on my printer. Although I have only a few of these stamps, I’ll add more over the next few weeks. To start, I’ve created a page for the Greek island of Crete. Some of these stamps for this album are rare and thereby expensive. Many are not. Previously, I would create a sub-album and wait until I get almost all of the stamps before creating the next album. This time I’m creating all of them regardless of how many stamps I own now.
remaining stamps & stories in sub-album
page |
story |
note |
used |
need |
ordered |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Main Page (Foreign Offices) |
|||||
Crete (Crete) |
✓ |
20 |
|||
Levante (Ottoman Empire) |
11 |
||||
Albania (Ottoman Empire) |
6 |
||||
Costantinopoli (Ottoman Empire) |
22 |
||||
Tripoli (Ottoman Empire) |
14 |
||||
Benghazi (Ottoman Empire) |
2 |
||||
Durazzo (Ottoman Empire) |
9 |
||||
Gerusalemme (Ottoman Empire) |
8 |
||||
Janina (Ottoman Empire) |
✓ |
✓ |
8 |
||
Salonicco (Ottoman Empire) |
8 |
||||
Scutari (Ottoman Empire) |
10 |
||||
Smirne (Ottoman Empire) |
13 |
||||
Valona (Ottoman Empire) |
11 |
||||
Pechino (China) |
18 |
||||
Tientsin (China) |
14 |