Umberto I
On January 9, 1878, at the age of 57, Vittorio Emanuele II of Savoy, then the first king of Italy, died at the Quirinal Palace in Rome. He’s buried in the Pantheon in Rome. I’ve been to that palace and I’ve seen his tomb at the Pantheon. He was succeeded by his son, Umberto I, when he was about 34 years old.
This page of my stamp album contains the first stamps of Umberto I. These are definitives which were used for several years. Over the years that follow these, many more stamps will be issued with the likeness of Umberto I, until he was assasinated by an Italian-American in the Summer of 1900. He’s also buried in the Pantheon and I’ve seen his tomb, as well.
As you can see, you learn a lot about a country and its history when you collect its stamps. As a fairly new Italian citizen – I received my citizenship at the beginning of 2021 – I’m enjoying this project of reviving and sorting through my Italian stamp collection.
Note
The first two rows of stamps on this page may seem odd or maybe overly simple but made complicated with overprints. They were first printed in 1875 to be used on official government documents, what is sometimes known in philately as documentary stamps or just revenue stamps, but then called francobollo di stato (i.e., stamp of the state) by the Italian government. You can see how these stamp looked originally on the State & Comune page of this album.
Living in Italy, I have purchased and used many of their modern equivalents, now called marca da bollo. There are many forms and documents that must be filed by citizens with the government. For instance, when I applied for my citizenship, several of the forms required that I purchase for each a documentary stamp for €38 from the Post Office. I had to attach it to the document before submitting it to whatever department handled the filing.
Apparently, back in 1875 and afterwards, at some point they printed many more of the document stamps than needed. So the Italian post office printed over them to convert them to convert them to normal mail stamps. The overprint drew squigly lines through the values in the center and wrote the new value in the bottom left and right corners: 2 C (i.e., cents). That seems to have been the cost of mailing a letter at the time.
Another possibility occurs to me as to why they used these stamps. It may be that when the king died, they didn’t want to continue to sell stamps with his image on them. However, they didn’t have stamps depicting the new king ready for sale. So in 1878 – the first year of the new king’s reign – they used these generic stamps, since they had plenty of them, overprinting them with correct postage for sending letters. Stamps of the new king went on sale the following year: they were a little slow on designing and printing totally new stamps.
This page is full: a few of them are used stamps that I hope to replace with unused ones. They can be a little expensive if unused, so it’s taking me time to get the ones I need. If you’ve been monitoring this page over the past few months, you can see that I have made some progress.
Contains 21 spots: own 21 – 21 unused, 0 used.
Page is finished.
Album or Web Page Last changed Sep 28, 2023
Stamp Details
The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.
spot |
own |
catalog |
subject |
description |
comment |
Documentary turned Postage
✓ |
29 |
2c in Oval |
2c (jan 1878) |
||
✓ |
30 |
5c in Oval |
2c (jan 1878) |
||
✓ |
31 |
20c in Oval |
2c (jan 1878) |
||
✓ |
32 |
30c in Oval |
2c (jan 1878) |
||
✓ |
33 |
1₤ in Oval |
2c (jan 1878) |
||
✓ |
34 |
2₤ in Oval |
2c (jan 1878) |
||
✓ |
35 |
5₤ in Oval |
2c (jan 1878) |
||
✓ |
36 |
10₤ in Oval |
2c (jan 1878) |
Umberto’s Reign Begins
✓ |
37 |
5c (aug 1879) |
|||
✓ |
38 |
10c (aug 1879) |
|||
✓ |
39 |
20c (aug 1879) |
|||
✓ |
40 |
25c (aug 1879) |
|||
✓ |
41 |
30c (aug 1879) |
|||
✓ |
42 |
50c (aug 1879) |
|||
✓ |
43 |
2₤ (1882) |
|||
✓ |
44 |
5c (oct 1889) |
|||
✓ |
45 |
40c (aug 1889) |
|||
✓ |
46 |
45c (aug 1889) |
|||
✓ |
47 |
60c (aug 1889) |
|||
✓ |
48 |
1₤ (aug 1889) |
|||
✓ |
49 |
5₤ (aug 1889) |
Footnotes
Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.
