The Stamp Collection consists of two large units, namely the postage stamps Fiume 1918-1924 and the stamps of the Military Administration of the Yugoslav Army for Rijeka and Istria 1945-1947. The stamps from the first group can be seen in digital form.
After having taken power in Rijeka, the Italian National Council sought to make its rule legitimate by passing a series of laws and regulations. Thus, an instruction was issued to withdraw the remaining Hungarian stamps (Reapers, Parliament, For War Aid, Carlo, Zita, express and porto stamps) by 2nd December 1918, and to start printing new ones. Due to the short time and the development of the political situation, a solution was accepted to make an overprint on the existing stamps, from the stocks of the Rijeka Post Office, with the name of the city – Fiume. The first overprints were made in the small Rijeka printing house Adolf Kirchofer & Co. In addition to two types of machine overprintings, there have also been six registered different types of manual overprinting, and the differences are visible in the size, shape and thickness of the lettering (type I – VI). A large quantity of Fiume porto stamps (intended for franking registered letters in local traffic) of 6 and 20 filars was stolen from storage, so the remaining stamps of this type were reprinted with the addition of Franco.
The first stamps with Rijeka motifs were put on sale on 30th January 1919. They were the so-called allegorical series (City Tower, Port of Rijeka, Monument to Garibaldi in Milan, The Face of a Woman) which were intended to encourage the idea of annexing Rijeka to the Kingdom of Italy. In May of the same year, a new series of stamps was put on sale, printed in memory of the Plebiscite of 30th October 1918, and the establishment of the Study Fund to raise money to help educate gifted students from Rijeka of lower financial status.
During D’Annunzio’s stay in the city, large quantities of unsold stamps from the allegorical series Fiume and Posta Fiume were reprinted with the inscription Franco and the mark of new value.