Members' Favorite Items

Interesting, unusual, or favorite items from members' collections are presented here in a "virtual clothesline exhibit."  Click on the thumbnails to open a larger image in a new window. 

Please consider adding your Vatican or Roman States item to this page (with or without your name).  It does not have to be rare or valuable; it just has to tell an interesting story or be special to you for some reason.  Submit your items to the Webmaster. 

Greg Pirozzi

This is one of my very favorite Vatican City postal issues, a beautiful souvenir sheet from the "Popes of the Holy Years" issue of 2000.  The scene depicted is Christmas Eve 1983, and His late Holiness Pope John Paul II is kneeling in prayer before the Holy Door to St. Peter's Basilica, which he has just opened to inaugurate the first Jubilee Year of his pontificate.  For me, the significance of this souvenir sheet—aside from its obvious aesthetic beauty—lies both in its commemoration of this seven-centuries old tradition of the Church and its implied prayerful hope for the future.

The original photograph from which Irio Ottavio Fantini designed this sheet may be seen here.

Tom Adkins

In 1972, I saw an announcement in Linn’s Stamp News that Sabena World Airlines' first flight from Brussels, Belgium to Douala, Cameroon would take place on December 2nd.  I stuck some Vatican stamps on an envelope and mailed it to the Vatican post office with a request to return the cover to me via the Sabena flight.  I never really expected to see the envelope again, but it came back to me complete with a Sabena first flight cachet and backstamped 4-12-1972 at Douala.  I have always remembered this cover as the one that got me hooked on aerophilately.

I later learned that mail sent from Vatican City is accepted on flights originating in most locations (though not the United States, for reasons I have never discovered).

Why don't you give it a try?

Dan Piazza

This is a cacheted cover from the extraordinary Holy Year proclaimed by Pius XI in 1933.  It is franked with three values of the 1929 Conciliation issue and the 1931 25c. provisional overprint.  (Interestingly, the latter stamp had its top ¼" neatly trimmed off prior to mailing and was tied to the cover this way.)  It was cancelled on April 2, the first day of the Holy Year.

It caught my eye because the cachet is captioned "Sponsored by the Rev. Fr. James R. Cox, Old St. Patrick's Church, Pittsburgh, Pa., for mailing from Vatican City."  It also included a descriptive insert, which you can see here.

I was inspired to do a little research into Fr. Cox, and actually discovered quite a bit of information about him.  I'll post it here—after I write it up for Vatican Notes.

Dick Leitermann

This is a nice commercial use on cover of two of Vatican City's most elusive early issues. In a row across the top are all six values of the 1935 International Juridical Congress issue. The Congress convened at Rome in 1934 to celebrate the 14th centenary of the judicial reforms of Emperor Justinian I. The designs are taken from frescoes by Raphael in the Vatican's Palazzo Apostolico.

The six stamps on the bottom are from the second (1937) printing of the 1934 provisionals, ordered to meet new postal rates established on August 29, 1933 by Vatican City Ordinance XLII. The Catalogo Enciclopedico Italiano estimates that only 18,000 complete sets of provisionals were printed, and today they are one of Vatican philately's great rarities.