The 3rd issue - general introduction

The third Lombardy-Venetian issue is composed by two only values, identical in everything but the color and of course, the value:

They represent the Frank Joseph effigy facing right (and therefore facing the opposite side in comparison with the second issue) closed in several ovals, one containing the effigy, another the motif surrounding it, another acting as external frame; also the small plug containing the value is of oval shape. They were printed in the Royal Printing House of Vienna, as for the previous issues, in sheets of 400 samples divided in 4 groups of 100 each. There are no more S. Andrea's crosses. They are perforated with pitch of 14 in block and printed on paper without watermark. At the beginning also other values (2, 3 and 15 Soldi) were foreseen that were anyway not issued. The 5 Soldi is known used from April 1861 and the 10 Soldi from March 1862: this difference in time let us understand how these stamps were put on the market not at a specific established date but after the end of the stock of the corresponding value of the previous issue.
The validity, as for the previous issue, was set for May 31st 1864. Unknown (as for all the postage stamps of the Lombardy-Venetia) the number of parts printed. In this case too, as in the previous issue, the printing of the color and of the effigy in relief were done in the same time, using the stereotypes obtained by the postal entires.
Interesting also the varieties of this issue: printing in albino, offsets, marks of "nail heads", etc..
Two varieties are the most known by collectors. The first one in a variety of perforation of the sample of 10 Soldi, originated by a shift of a line of the perforation tools that caused the appearance of two columns of stamps partially "anomalous", one with some parts shorter than usual and one with some parts longer. .The "usual" stamps present 18 teeth in vertical while these parts do have respectively 17 and 19 teeth.
The second variety was originated by the presence of two typographic edgings (filetti) in the composition, one at the top and one at the bottom, to keep the composition in place. When this edging was getting dirty, it was leaving its mark on the external sheet borders that were eliminated before putting the parts on the market. It may happen that, in stamps badly centered in vertical and coming from the external rows, the edging mark is visible on the stamp.
Official reprints were made in the years 1866, 1870, 1884, 1887 and 1894.