France 1849 '1 Franc Vermillion' Tete-beche Block

A republic's first stamps

France put its first postage stamps on sale on January 1, 1849, as part of a postal reform under the young Second Republic. The design, a profile of Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture, was drawn by Jacques-Jean Barre, general engraver at the Paris Mint. The stamps were printed at the Mint by Anatole Hulot, a civil servant who held the right to print France's stamps there until 1876. They were imperforate, cut apart with scissors.

Only two values came first in January 1849: a black 20 centimes for an ordinary letter and a red 1 franc. According to the philatelic historian Steven C. Walske, the 1 franc paid the domestic triple-weight letter rate. Two printing plates were prepared for it. Walske believes only the first was used for the vermilion stamps, about 250,000 of them, printed in the first week of 1849.

The vermilion had a short life. In December 1849 the post office pulled it from sale because its color was too close to the orange of the coming 40 centimes stamp, and clerks might confuse the two. Walske counts about 122,000 vermilion stamps returned to be destroyed. The 1 franc was printed in carmine from then on, and the vermilion became the key stamp of classic France.

One image upside down

French stamp plates of the period were built by hand from individual cast copies of the design, called cliches, assembled into a sheet of 150. If a worker set one cliche the wrong way round, every sheet printed from that plate carried one stamp upside down next to its neighbor. Collectors call such a pair tete-beche, French for head to tail.

The first 1 franc plate had exactly one such cliche, at position 35. The second plate was normal. With about 250,000 vermilion stamps printed and roughly half of them sent back for destruction, Walske estimates that only about 850 vermilion tete-beche pairs were ever in circulation. Very few survived intact, because a sheet had to be kept or used in a block for the pair to stay together.

Collectors divide the vermilion into four major shades: rouge-brun, vermillon, vermillon terne and vermillon vif, the bright vermilion. Each shade has its own tete-beche census, and most are tiny. One heavily canceled rouge-brun pair is known on an August 1849 cover to India. A faulty used strip of three on a fragment is the only known tete-beche in plain vermillon. A canceled strip of three is the only one in vermillon terne. For vermillon vif there is just this block.

From a book in Bordeaux to a Paris record

In 1931 a mint block of 22 vermillon vif stamps was found between two pages of a book in Bordeaux. In it was the only known copy of the vermillon vif tete-beche. The block of 22 was cut up, but the tete-beche was kept in a block of four, with the upside-down stamp at lower right.

The block went into the Champion collection, one of the great French holdings. It was shown at the SIPEX exhibition in 1966 by General Gil, at ARPHILA in 1975 and INTERPEX in 1976 by the collector Duane Hilmer, and at PHILEXFRANCE in 1989. By then it had earned its nickname, the "Aristocrat of Philately."

On November 17, 2003, it was the star lot in the sale of the La Fayette collection at the Grand Hotel in Paris. The sale had 129 lots, brought in 5.77 million euros, and saw twelve lots pass 100,000 euros. The block was hammered at 820,000 euros and cost 924,000 euros with fees, a record for a French stamp. One account gives the price as US $1,104,000. The buyer was not announced.

Sources disagree on the block's early history. A 2021 museum list of world rarities says that both Philipp von Ferrary and Arthur Hind owned it. Walske's specialist study instead traces a different block, the so-called Vervelle, through Ferrary and Hind. Since the vermillon vif block is reported to have surfaced only in 1931, after Ferrary's collection had been sold, the Ferrary and Hind ownership more likely belongs to the Vervelle block.

The other block: the Vervelle

The 1 franc has a second famous tete-beche block of four, and the two are easily confused. The Vervelle is an unissued pale vermilion (vermillon pale) named after the French dealer who first publicized it. In 1892 Vervelle bought a partial sheet of 139 unused stamps from the estate of Anatole Hulot, the printing supervisor of the 1849-50 issue.

That sheet included the tete-beche at position 35, and Vervelle cut it out as a block of four. According to Walske, it passed into the Ferrary collection, sold in the eleventh Ferrary sale in November 1924 to Arthur Hind, and later joined the Champion collection too. Because the Vervelle was never put on sale at post offices, collectors treat it as a separate item from the issued vermillon vif.

The aristocrat of French stamps

Twenty years after the 2003 sale, French writers still describe the block as the most expensive French stamp ever sold at auction. A leading French catalogue lists the block at 1,200,000 euros, and French Wikipedia calls it the second most expensive stamp in the world, a ranking that depends on how one counts.

The block also shows how a single slip in a hand-built plate could create a rarity. Walske's census of French errors shows that tete-beche pairs of later values, such as the 20 centimes of 1862-71, were printed by the hundreds of thousands. For the 1849 vermilion, a short print run, a fast withdrawal and a book in Bordeaux left one bright-vermilion example.

The numbers

Issue date

January 1, 1849

Withdrawn

December 1849

Vermilion printed

About 250,000, of which about 122,000 were returned for destruction (Walske's estimate)

Tete-beche position

Position 35 of plate 1, in a sheet of 150 cliches

Tete-beche pairs in circulation

About 850 in all vermilion shades (Walske's estimate)

Known vermillon vif tete-beche

1, in this unused block of four

Perforation

Imperforate

Designer

Jacques-Jean Barre, general engraver of the Paris Mint; printed at the Mint by Anatole Hulot

Timeline

1. Jan 1, 1849

   France's first stamps, the Ceres 20 centimes black and 1 franc red, go on sale.

2. Jan 1849

   About 250,000 vermilion 1 franc stamps are printed from the first plate, which has an inverted cliche at position 35.

3. Dec 1849

   The vermilion is withdrawn because its color is too close to the coming 40 centimes orange; about 122,000 are returned for destruction.

4. 1892

   The dealer Vervelle buys a partial sheet of 139 pale vermilion stamps from Anatole Hulot's estate, including a tete-beche.

5. Nov 1924

   The Vervelle tete-beche block sells in the eleventh Ferrary sale to Arthur Hind.

6. 1931

   A mint block of 22 vermillon vif stamps, including the only known vermillon vif tete-beche, is found in a book in Bordeaux.

7. 1966

   General Gil shows the block at the SIPEX exhibition.

8. 1975

   Duane Hilmer shows it at ARPHILA.

9. 1976

   Hilmer shows it again at INTERPEX.

10. 1989

    It is exhibited at PHILEXFRANCE '89.

11. Nov 17, 2003

    Sold for 924,000 euros with fees in the La Fayette collection sale at the Grand Hotel in Paris, a record for a French stamp.

The world in 1849

• Jan 23, 1849

  Elizabeth Blackwell receives her medical degree, the first woman doctor in the United States.

• Feb 8, 1849

  The Roman Republic is proclaimed.

• Mar 23, 1849

  Sardinia is defeated at Novara, and King Charles Albert abdicates.

• Apr 14, 1849

  Hungary's revolutionary parliament declares independence from the Habsburgs.

• Jul 3, 1849

  French troops occupy Rome, and the Roman Republic surrenders.

• Jul 15, 1849

  Austria sends pilotless balloons against Venice, the first air strike.

• Aug 28, 1849

  Venice surrenders to Austria after a four-month siege.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, France 1849 '1 Franc Vermillion' Tete-beche Block is number 16 of 100 in the stamps entries of the FLOAT 100. 82 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (67 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The block survived because a sheet fragment of 22 stamps was left between the pages of a book in Bordeaux until 1931.
• The vermilion 1 franc was withdrawn after less than a year because clerks might mistake it for the orange 40 centimes.
• There are two famous 1 franc tete-beche blocks of four: this issued vermillon vif and the never-issued pale Vervelle, cut from a sheet bought from the printer's estate.
• The whole tete-beche variety comes from a single upside-down cliche, at position 35 of a 150-stamp plate.
• At the 2003 sale, twelve lots topped 100,000 euros, and this block led them all.