OLD ITALIAN STATES 1850-1866

The Old Italian States stamps have their collocation in a very complex period of the Italian history, period that saw the disappearing of the old Duchies, the unification of the territory under a single flag and the birth of the Italian Kingdom; period also characterized by wars, occupations and insurrectionary revolts: the "Risorgimento".
At the time of the issuing of the first postage stamps that happened in June 1st 1850 by the Lombardy-Venetia Kingdom, the Italian territory was divided in States with different currencies, administrations and governments; it's enough to think that in 1859 something like 270 different types of currencies, between official and not, were circulating in the various States. This complicates the postal history of that time that becomes so fascinating and various for the different postal relationships between the States themselves as well as with the outside world.

The Old Italian States collection was a long time ago one of my main collection, but as the Papal States and Lombardy-Venetia each grew to over 60 pages, I decided to focus only on them. Now, the present pages are part of an old my collection which I have already sold most of it. The collection was once 160 pages in size. I wanted to bring these pages up even though I am no longer growing this collection.