The 3rd issue - general introduction

The Roman State third issue was born in March 12th 1868.
This issue is exactly the same as the previous one with the difference that is perforated and has some slight difference in color shade: the introduction of the perforation was aimed to make easier to separate the pieces. As already said the stamps were the same as the previous issue and therefore:

The 20 centesimi value exits with two different color shades clearly different: Indian red and purple (solferino): even the 3 centesimi exists both in gray as in pink gray (as for the 2nd issue). The 80centesimi exists in the pink shade and also in red lilac.
The perforation was at the beginning made on the sheets of 64 pieces, divided in 4 groups of 16, separated by inter-spaces, using some sheets taken from the non perforated stock. The sheet structure however gave huge perforation problems due to the inter-spaces. For that reason, to make the job easy, they moved to new compositions of 120 pieces (8 rows of 15 pieces). The perforation is of the "linear" type with pitch 13.
The sheets were first perforated horizontally, then vertically: the external stamps in the sheet did not receive any perforation and therefore we can find samples with no perforation at one margin (sheet borders) or with two margins without perforation (sheet corners).
The perforation was quite irregular (only at the beginning was better): the equipment went down easily and this was the reason of incomplete perforations, misaligned, irregularities (also because often sheets were not perforated one by one but in blocks and this caused several varieties and stamps with different dimensions). Again Gallenga in his beautiful already mentioned study for the second issue explains how the 120 pieces composition has been realized: "The typographic block was composed by leaving the old stereotypes at their place, grouping them to the left by eliminating the inter-spaces and adding, to the right of the 8x8 block, additional 8 rows of 7 new stereotypes". Only the 3 centesimi value was always printed with the 64 pieces sheets system, by eliminating however later on the inter-spaces. The printing of the sheets was made as always with the black typographic method by the "Regia Tipografia della Camera Apostolica di Roma". The paper used came from different providers and was of very different types, semi-glossy or matte, always without watermark.
I summarize here schematically the types of stamp/paper/sheet that can be found in this issue:

Some combinations are quite more rare than other. Of other we are aware only as new parts: I will not go deeper in this subject that should have already created several headaches...
Between the interesting varieties there are the samples and couples printed with the system of 64 pieces sheets, that present with them the group inter-space, parts without perforation, double perforations, offsets, few very rare split parts, and the usual printing flows, not uniformity of dots, frames, ornaments, values etc..

Again from the several times mentioned Gallenga studies, we can deduct, even if with possible upside changes (because several sheets were taken from the values without perforation, for instance for the very rare 3 centesimi pink gray, not included in the below quantity) the approximate quantities of the issue and the remainders, later on placed in the collectors market: