Treskilling Yellow
| Treskilling Yellow | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Country of production | Sweden |
| Date of production | 1855 |
| Nature of rarity | Color error |
| No. in existence | one |
| Face value | three Swedish skillings |
| Estimated value | At least 2,880,000 Swiss francs $2,300,000 (last known sale price 2010) |
The "Treskilling" Yellow, or three schilling banco error of color (Swedish: Gul tre skilling banco, literally "yellow three skilling banco"), is a Swedish postage stamp of which only one example is known to exist. This stamp was canceled at Nya Kopparberget (now known as Kopparberg), about 150 kilometers from Uppsala, on July 13, 1857.
In 1855, Sweden issued its first postage stamps, in a set of five values depicting the Swedish coat of arms, with denominations ranging from three to 24 Swedish skillings. The three-skilling stamp was normally printed in a blue-green color, with the eight-skilling stamp being printed in yellowish orange. It is not known exactly what went wrong, but the most likely explanation is that a stereotype of the eight-skilling printing plate (which consisted of 100 stereotypes assembled into a 10 × 10 array) was damaged or broken, and it was mistakenly replaced with a three-skilling. The number of stamps printed in the wrong color is unknown, but so far only one example has been found.
Somehow, this error went entirely unnoticed at the time, and by 1873 the Swedish currency was changed. The skilling stamps were replaced by new stamps denominated in "öre". In 1886, a young collector named Georg Wilhelm Backman was going through covers in his grandmother's attic at the farm Väster Munga Gård north of Västerås, and came across one with a three-skilling stamp, for which the Stockholm stamp dealer Heinrich Lichtenstein was offering seven kronor apiece.
After it had changed hands several times, Sigmund Friedl sold it to Philipp von Ferrary in 1894, who had at that time the largest known stamp collection in the world, and paid the breathtaking sum of 4,000 Austro-Hungarian gulden. As time passed, and no other "yellows" surfaced despite vigorous searching, it became clear that the stamp was not only rare, but quite possibly the only surviving example.
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