The first Austrian stamps, beginning in 1850, used the kreuzer unit of currency for their value. At the time, 1 gulden = 60 kreuzer (sometimes spelled ‘kreutzer’).
Austrian kreuzer stamps are highly collectible because they were the first stamps of Austria, and because the denominations in kreuzer were used for the Austro-Hungarian Empire and beyond.
The first kreuzer postage stamps in Austria had the denomination written with a numeral plus the full word of the currency unit at the bottom (for example, ‘9 KREUZER’). Later stamps used an abbreviation (‘Kr’) instead.
Stamps of the Lombardy-Venetia area of far northeastern Italy used Austrian stamps but changed kreuzer to centesimi and, in 1858, adopted the units florin and soldis.
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There were several different values and colors of kreuzer stamps issued in Austria during the last half of the nineteenth century. Most stamps of this time featured either a coat-of-arms or a portrait of Emperor Franz Jozef I. In 1899, the currency of Austria was changed to krone and heller units.
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