The issue - general introduction

As written in the historic introduction, the Parma Duchy too was united with the Sardinia Kingdom, in the ways I have already briefly described. Also the postage stamps were to be changed to eliminate any marks of the past dominion.
As usual from Turin the delivery of the new stamps of the IV Sardinia issue arrived. They have been put in circulation August 1st 1859 (but they were already in Parma from June end!). Nevertheless the thing was not fully correct from the administrative point of view because the official annexation to the Sardinia Kingdom was supposed to arrive only with the plebiscite of 12th-14th August and with the Popular Assembly of September 1859.
A new set of stamps was decided, despite the Sardinian ones were allowed to circulate (creating very rare postage combinations). The creative effort was not so huge, because the stereotypes used to make the newspaper revenues stamps were used (see introduction to the newspaper issues). A precise date of issue does not exist, while the oldest date of use found is August 27th 1859.
The minting die for the newspaper revenue stamps was made once again by Donnino Bentelli. From this the number "9" was eliminated and substituted with typographic characters to create the new values. The subject is an octagon made by curved lines where is placed the label "STATI PARMENSI" with under it an horizontal dividing line; in the lower part of the stamp there is the semicircular label "CENTESIMI" and under it the indication of the value. The printing is typographic, in color, on white machine made paper, without watermark, of low quality.
The job of introducing the values did not give bright results; numbers upside down, incomplete, misalignments and various label damages are common. Slightly different also was the spacing between the samples in comparison with the newspaper values because typographic inter-spaces have been inserted in the composition (some of them left small traces on the stamp sides). In the composition of the values two different types of "0" have been also used, one large and one narrow.
Sheets of 60 pieces were printed (10 rows of 6), in two different printing runs, moving the position of some stereotypes in the sheet. Here the succession of the different printing runs and the oldest known dates of use:

As it can be noticed, all the values were reprinted with the exception of the 80 centesimi; for the 5 and the 40 centesimi the color somehow different is key to recognize the printing run; very difficult instead is for the values of 10 and 20 centesimi, to the point that they are not even catalogued in distinct way (the criteria, when possible, is the date of the cancellation, on the shape of the "0" and on small chromatic variations). Between the varieties we find stereotypes defects (that, let's not forget, were already on the newspaper stamps), damages or badly printed, bumped frames and some offsets.
The quantities printed are known and, in summary, are the following: