Torino Printing
At the end of 1865, it was decided that Italy would print its own stamps. All of the plates for the stamps that the London printer, De La Rue was using to print Italy’s stamps were sent to Officina Governativa Carte Valori (i.e., the Government Printing Works) in Torino for them to continue printing the stamps starting in 1866. As a result, the stamps printed in London (see the previous page) were identical to the ones printed in Torino, the ones shown on this page: I have almost all of these and none of those.
The only difference between these stamps and the ones from the previous page the colors. The mixture of inks is slightly different. The London stamps are duller, greyer. The colors of the Torino ones are richer, more vibrant. That may say something about the professionalism of the British, versus the passionate artistic nature of the Italian.
Note
When I first put my stamps on this album page, I had only a few. As I added more of them over the past year, I noticed something odd about the two on the fourth row: they’re the same stamp, but from different printers. One was printed in London, and the other in Torino (Turin). All of the stamps on this page are supposed to be from Torino. So why is there one from London? The stamps on the previous page were all printed in London, before Italy began printing their own stamps. So why isn’t this one London stamp on the previous page?
What’s also odd is there’s no place for one of the Torino printed stamps. Looking at the catalog number column – ignoring the leading T for Torino – there are Sassone 14 through 22, as well as 26 and 28. You may wonder what happened to stamps 23, 24, 25,: those were only printed in London – you can see them on the previous page. But that doesn’t account for Sassone 27, which was printed only in Torino, starting in August 1877. I suspect the publisher of this album, Leuchtturm messed up when they did the layout for this page and the previous one.
Recently, I stumbled on a Sassone 27 at an auction in Milan. I bid on it and won. I just received it. So, I moved the London stamp to the previous page: I added an extra place for it at the bottom of the page. I moved Sassone T26 over one space so that I could put Sassone 27 next to it, in sequential order. I just need to remove the text about London printing over T26.
Incidentally, these kind of things make stamp collecting more of an adventure for me. I enjoy it.
Contains 12 spots: own 12 – 9 unused, 3 used.
Page is full, but not yet finished.
Album or Web Page Last changed Nov 24, 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 |
Adorned Numbers
✓ |
14T |
1c (1865) |
|||
✓ |
15T |
2c (mar 1865) |
Vittorio Emanuele II - Joubert & Wyon
✓ |
16T |
5c (dec 1863) |
|||
✗ |
17T |
10c (dec 1863) |
|||
✓ |
19T |
30c (dec 1863) |
|||
✗ |
20T |
40c (dec 1863) |
|||
✓ |
21T |
60c (dec 1863) |
|||
✓ |
22T |
2₤ (dec 1863) |
|||
✓ |
26T |
20c (apr 1867) |
|||
✓ |
27 |
10c (aug 1877) |
|||
✗ |
18T |
15c (dec 1863) |
|||
✓ |
28 |
20c (aug 1877) |
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.
