THE POSTAGE STAMPS OF THE DUCHY OF MODENA

In the Duchy of Modena postage stamps started to be introduced in the postal system from 1 June 1852.Two different print compositions were prepared, that is with and without the full stop after the figure of the face value, and some values were printed in both compositions.
In the one without the full stop after the figure there are cent.5 green, cent.10 rose, cent.15 yellow, cent.25 light brown or buff, cent.25 green (due to a mistake made by the people in charge of the print, the paper prepared for cent.5 was used instead - only 960 copies were printed, in four sheets of 240, but they were not delivered and were mostly demonetized), cent.40 pale blue (about 15 examples are known, all of them without gum as they have been removed from letters which had escaped cancellation) and cent.40 dark blue.
In the composition with the full stop after the figure there are cent.5 green, cent.5 olive green, cent.10 rose, cent.40 dark blue and 1 lira white.
The latter, the composition with the highest face value, was printed on paper with watermark “A”, the initials of the paper producer, Amici. Depending on how the sheets had been placed in the printing press, watermark can be of four different kinds: regular, reverse, inverted and reverse inverted.
All the stamps, whose availability is rarer and rarer, testify how our ancestors franked letters, which were the only way, for private people, to communicate with other peoples.

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