Express
Starting in 1903, Italy began to offer express mail service. This is an expedited mail delivery service. It costs extra, but your mail is delivered faster. This concept was established by the Universal Postal Union, which is now part of the United Nations. The U.P.U. was established in 1874: Italy joined three months later. As a result of this membership, Italians were able to use express service for sending mail quickly internationally.
What’s odd is that they made it available on in the colonies, from the Aegean islands. I wonder if it included express delivery to the Italian peninsula. I can’t imagine very fast delivery at that time for an envelop sent from a small island in the southern end of the Aegean sea, all the way to Milan. Maybe it wasn’t that it arrived soon, but that it arrived sooner than normal delivery time.
Note
There are only two more stamps needed to complete this page. However, I’m questioning them, the express stamps for the Aegean Assistance Fund. One of the dealers near me has them listed for sale with the notation that they’re German occupation stamps. I’m not sure if that’s correct.
So far, I’ve had a policy of collecting only Italian stamps in my Italian collection, not stamps issued by other countries when they occupied Italian territories. I could remove the spaces for these two stamps, if they are German issued. But I already bought some other Aegean stamps from this same time and for this same charity (see the Aegean Red Cross page).
Similarly, I have stamps from the Republic of Socialist Italy. That was a puppet government instituted by Germany with Mussolini at the head. It’s a little different than an occupation, but not much differnt. I’m not sure what I’ll do. I need to confirm that Germany was the issuer before I’ll decide.
Contains 6 spots: own 4 – 4 unused, 0 used.
Album or Web Page Last changed Apr 14, 2024
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 |
Express Mail
✓ |
E1 |
1.25₤ (dec 1936) |
|||
✓ |
E2 |
2.50₤ (dec 1936) |
|||
✓ |
E5 |
1.25₤ (jul 1944) |
|||
✓ |
E6 |
2.50₤ (jul 1944) |
Aegean Assistance
E3 |
1.25+1.25₤ (nov 1943) |
||||
E4 |
2.50+2.50₤ (nov 1943) |
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.
