Offsets

The offset is a variety quite appealing and known in the philatelic world because it is found in several issues, not only the old ones. In simple words it consists in seeing the print of the stamp also from the back of the stamp itself in more or less visible way; in very rare cases the print on the back can be the one of a different stamp. In the Lombardy-Venetia issues the offset is visible in several values; some are rare, others more common but always very interesting.
Its origin can be of two types:
1) The printing system (platen, cylinder or press) has made an idle loop or a printing leaving some ink deposited: when the next sheet was placed in the machine (probably not perfectly cleaned) at the contact with the previous ink the press created an image on the back too. The offset is usually perfectly coincident with the stamp image.
2) A sheet just printed was posed on top of another not perfectly dried and this one left the printing image on the back of the first one. In this case the offset is usually shifted vs. the printing of the stamp on the front. These offset types are much more rare to find.

Here are some samples of values of the different issues (Fig. 1 to 10) that show very clearly the offset. Be careful not to confuse the offsets with stamps printed on very thin paper that leave the printing visible from the back.

Fig. 1: 15 centesimi of the 2nd type; an original wrinkle of the paper is also visible

Fig. 2: 15 centesimi of the 3rd type with a rare shifted offset

Fig. 3: 10 centesimi, hand made paper	Fig. 4: 15 centesimi, 3rd type, hand made paper

Fig. 5: 30 centesimi, 1st type, hand-made paper	Fig. 6: 45 centesimi, 1st type, hand-made paper

Fig. 7: with front-back (recto-verso) printing and offset at the same time.
It's a very rare and striking variety.

Fig. 8: second issue - 5 Soldi 1st type

Fig. 9: 5 Soldi of the 3rd issue with beautiful offset



Fig. 10: 5 Soldi of the 5th issue: vertical pair