The 10 cent stamp of the definitive series “Democracy” was issued on October 1st 1945 and remained valid for franking until December 31st 1948, for a total of three years and three months. The update of the postal rates introduced on February 1st 1946 represented an important increase, due to high post-war inflation: all rates were doubled and, if necessary, rounded towards the higher unit. This cancelled all the fares requesting stamps in cents of Lira: the 10 cent Democracy became basically useless only four months after the date of issue, like the 20 cents, the 40 cents, the 60 cents and the 80 cents.
When the stamp was issued, there was no postal fare as low as 10 cents, being the lowest one 20 cents. This implies that no Postal History object can be regularly franked with one and only 10 cent stamp; the only examples are objects which were then subject to taxation (because insufficiently franked), objects for which the sender tried to use a non-authorized combination of discounted rates (sometimes irregularly accepted by the Postal Service), or philatelic objects not intended to be delivered through the postal service and franked with a symbolic low-value stamp to collect special cancellations.