A Vatican Stamp Collection from the Past 150 Years

Recently, a  stamp collector, Christopher Brunner, generously donated his very large collection of Vatican stamps to Father Kunst’s Papal Artifacts’ Collection.  An inestimable amount of work went into his collection.

Included are highly documented and cataloged stamps from the last 150 years.  Below are pictured just a few of this incredible gift.

We will be showing them from all time periods throughout the year.

Thank you to Christopher Brunner for this memorabilia of such historic significance, adding to the living history and lore of all things papal.  —Father Richard Kunst

A Message from the Doner, Christopher Brunner, to Father Richard Kunst Regarding the Collection

Dear Fr. Kunst,

The collection of postage stamps is complete through year 2000; the postal stationery is close, but missing some early issues (as listed in my description of the albums).

Most postal systems regarded postage as simply functional (with a bit of advertising by colonies and small nations, and propaganda during the hot and cold war years) until serious marketing efforts developed from the 1960s on.

You’ll notice how the VC issues increase from Pope Paul VI on.  I haven’t tracked more recent years, but see the stamp dealer pages for that material.  

For example, 

http://www.ibolli.it/indexes/vaticano/sommario00-09.php?fr_area=vaticano 

 https://postalmuseum.si.edu/research/topical-reference-pages/the-vatican-city-collection/index.html 

The numbers on the album pages are Scott catalog numbers, and I included the Scott pages, printed and scanned.