The 1st issue -general introduction

June 1st 1850 is a date that to most of people will say not so much.
But for the ones who collect Old Italian States stamps this date says a lot, quite a lot.
Are in fact the values in centesimi of the Lombardy-Venetia the first stamps to come first to light between all the Old Italian States, just after a bit more than 10 years of the appearance of the first stamp in the world (the Penny Black, May 6th 1840).
It's dated March 26th 1850 the "Disposition" stating that, starting June1st 1850, the postage stamps ("bolli da lettere"), to be applied to the mail, (for the "affrancazione" of the mail) should be used (if you want to see this Disposition in a separate page, CLICK HERE).
It's also true that the Lombardy-Venetia commonly accepted as the birth date of the old Italian stamps (the "true Italian" to print postage stamps was the Sardinia Kingdom, in January 1st 1851).
The first issue, fully identical in the drawing to the Austrian first issue besides the value denomination, is composed by 5 different values, without perforation:

At the beginning, in place of the 45 centesimi value, it was foreseen the 60 centesimi stamp that anyway was not issued due to the reduction in cost from 60 to 45 centesimi for letters beyond the leagues (destruction decree nbr 851 of June 3rd, 1850; were burnt 499,920 pieces, that is 2,083 sheets).
The drawing was made by Johannes Jakob Herz and the engraving was under the responsibility Hermann Tantenhayn (others write Tautenhayn).
It represents the Austrian coat of arms with all around palm leaves (at bottom); laurel (to the left) and oak (to the right), with on top the royal crown; at the top there is the pretentious label "K.K. POST STEMPEL" (Kaiselich Königlicher Post Stempel / Imperial and Real postage stamp). A double rectangular thin frame surrounds the ensemble, with the internal one with small rounding of the corners. At the bottom there is the label with the value also enclosed in a frame that repeats the corner ornaments of the internal one around the coat of arms. The printing, typographic, was done by the Vienna "K.K. Hof-und Staatsdruckerei" (Imperial Printing House), initially on hand-made paper (rough, irregular, porous, watermarked) and later on machine-made paper (smooth, homogeneous, uniform thickness, without watermark). The sheets were of 240 pieces divided in 4 groups of 60, in 8 rows of 8 parts; the last row was composed by 4 stamps and 4 S. Andrea's Crosses (see the "Going deep" section for the details on this subject).
Their validity was lasting up to 10/31/1858 but they were tolerated up to mid 1858. We don't know the quantity printed even if a "guess" on the quantity has been tried by Provera in his detailed studies; by analyzing the quantity of documents that were sent he guessed that the total quantities printed, all the printing runs included, could be in the order of:

For the printing of this issue a single minting die was used without the lower label with the value. The cost for the engraving was 40 "fiorini". From this die were obtained the primary matrixes for the various values (one for each value, both for the ones in Kreuzer as well as for the ones in centesimi, therefore 10 matrixes in total) and later on the secondary matrixes with the hand insertion of the value. Only the 45 centesimi was obtained from the 30 centesimi dismantling the value "30" and substituting the value "45": remaining signs of this operation are often visible in the 45 centesimi stamps.
After some technical steps , the final "cliches" were obtained (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: "cliché" of the 1 Kr. of Austria
(image corrected by design because the "cliché" are always mirroring the stamps)
The same was used to print the Lombardy-Venetia stamps
being different only for the lower label
Image coming from the magazine "Filatelia", nbr. 10 of October 31st 1963.

At the beginning the coat of arm printing was coming out sharp and well delineated (coat of arms defined "original"), with the dotted background well placed and regular. Later on, due to the quick wear of the printing stereotypes, the dots decayed more and more to the point to connect each other giving printings of very poor appearance. For that reason the coat of arms was "revisited" and the following printings present themselves with smaller dots, spaced and irregular. The distance between two samples is around 2.5 mm ("narrow" spacing) and later on of 3.2 mm ("wide" spacing). I let you go to the "Going deep" section for more details on the coat of arms as well as on the spacing. As already said, the paper used was in substance of two types: hand-made and machine made; nevertheless inside each of these two groups we can define several quite evident differences as quality, thickness, homogeneity, color etc.: some paper type is not so common. The hand-made paper was carrying at the center of the sheet the watermark "KKHM", initials of Kaiserlich-Konigliches Handels-Ministerium (Imperial Real Commerce Ministry) in italic capital letters. The machine made paper was instead not watermarked.
Go again to "Going deep" for more on the subject.
In relationship to the printing we can find several varieties that constitute the basis of infinite and very interesting dedicated collections: from the offsets to the partial printings, to the frame faults, to the typographic spacing marks (due to the surge in printing of the small blades that separate the various "cliché", that created in some cases colored horizontal marks or more rarely vertical between the various pieces), to the "smears" of the lateral borders ("randdrucke" printing, typical of pieces coming from the sheet edge), to the "coat of arm in relief" and so on . I leave to the collectors the pleasure to expand this subject, so large and difficult (for the curious one some more detail is inserted in the already mentioned several times "Going deep" section).
Official reprints of these stamps were made in 1866, 1870, 1884, 1887 e 1894; some of them are rather rare.
Several values were forged to cheat the Postal Administration: are known some from Verona (15 and 30 centesimi) and Milan (15, 30 and 45 centesimi); in all cases we are dealing with rare parts, if not very rare.

A clarification is due on the types, sub-types, plates etc. classification of this issue: I will follow the scheme adopted by the main catalogues. On these subjects a lot has been written and often with very different opinions. Several dedicated publications (books /magazines) deal with these subjects in much more detailed way : I invite you once again the collector who wants to go in more details to consult this important material.