Authentic colour reproduction of an original stamp; front illustration, not authentication of watermark, paper, perforation or exact shade
1899 / Heritage
The shipwreck of Saint Paul
The first pictorial definitives
Denomination10/-
Issue date1899-02-04
The story behind the issue
Four pictorial designs brought local boats, maritime history, an allegory of Malta and Saint Paul onto the island’s stamps. The lower values used Crown CA paper, while the two higher values used Crown CC.
Technical details
- Issuing authority
- Malta Post Office
- Postal purpose
- Postage
- Currency
- GBP pre-decimal
- Designer
- Not documented
- Printer
- De La Rue
- Printing process
- Line engraving
- Stamp dimensions
- Not documented
- Stamps per sheet
- 60 stamps in five rows of 12
- Plate number
- No plate number reported by Séfi
- Perforation
- Not documented
- Watermark
- Crown CC
- Paper
- Not documented
- Colour
- Deep blue / blue-black
- Quantity
- Not documented
Sources & verification
VerifiedImage & attribution
Photo © WissensDürster, 2026, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0; resized and converted to WebP. Underlying 1899 Malta government stamp artwork is public domain. · Photograph: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Underlying government stamp artwork published 1899; expired government-work term. Changes: resizing and WebP conversion only.
Base designs only; shades, errors, proofs and later printings excluded.
