Most of us have not been able to get all of the 2024 stamps needed to fill in our Vatican stamp collections, with the Vatican CFN online sales site being down for such a long time. It is a real bummer! I've been making a list of everything else I need for 2024 so when the CFN sales website re-opens everything can be quickly ordered, although it still looks like it is going to be a while before that happens. In the meantime, I have been working on the many areas of my Vatican stamp collection that have been long overdue for attention. All of the stamp websites, such as Pennyblackstamp.com, ebay.com, decampe.com, and others have been up on my computer screen. Yes, I have a lot of Vatican stamps still needed for my collection.
This week I've been doing a lot of work on Vatican postmarks. There is always another cover needed when studying Vatican postmarks. One of my conclusions is that there probably aren't any collectors who have a "complete" Vatican postmark cover collection.
But the Vatican Philatelic Society postmark database is growing. We thought our records had most information up until about 2010 when the cachet covers dealers stop producing new material. In recent years (from 2010 forward) we have been able to get new information from the Vatican postal announcements we have on file on the VPS website. From these postal announcements, it has been learned that the Vatican Post Office produces a lot of special postmarks that are not tied to new stamp releases. There are special postmarks for papal travels, Vatican participation in philatelic events, and many other types of Vatican events that were not previously known until I studied the postal announcements. All information about postmarks since 2010 is being added to the VPS postmark database as quickly as possible, and a new computer program has been developed to view special postmarks. This can be found by visiting the VPS website home page (vaticanstamps.org), by entering https://vaticanstamps.org/cancels/tbldisplay02.php in your computer browser, or by clicking .
The program displays postmarks by year and also allows printing of the postmark information. The pages can be easily printed, and are similar in style to the VPS album page that was developed based on the Cardinal Spellman album pages. These pages were displayed at the Spellman Museum of Stamps And Postal History during Vatican Stamp Day in October of 2024. The postmark pages can become new additions to your Vatican stamp notebooks.
Here is one example of a special postmark, developed for the 2016 stamp issue honoring the 80th birthday of Pope Francis:
There is a lot of work remaining to bring the VPS postmark database to a full state of completeness. Meanwhile, you can look at what is currently on file and use it to check your own collection. I would like to know areas where you find missing postmarks. Obviously there are a lot of recent year records have not been added to the database yet. Another area of missing information is when the same postmark was used for multiple issues, as was done from the 1960s through the late 1970s. It is still a bit of a struggle to develop and present some of this information. Hopefully before the 100th anniversary of the Vatican Post Office in 2029 the postmark database can have complete postmark information. Wouldn't it be really nice for the VPS to be able to publish some kind of document containing 100 years of Vatican postmark history to celebrate 100 years of the Vatican Post Office's existence?
Meanwhile, take a look at the postmark webpage using the link information provided. Send your thoughts and information along using the VPS website contact form. Help is always needed. If you are interested in working on the VPS postmark database just drop us a note. Also, let us know if you have any special projects you are working on to expand your Vatican collections--perhaps it will inspire others, and you may also find a VPS member with a shared interest.
I also hope everyone is looking at the new Daily Album Page feature that is linked to the Daily Emails. We have been fortunate to have VPS member Charlie Schaefer contribute some really interesting material from his notebooks for this project. If you would like share something from you stamp collection and show it to fellow VPS members, please let us know. Any VPS member can contribute!
So look through your collection and send something along--we look forward to hearing from you!
