Sicilian Error of Color (1/2 grana blue)

A king's portrait for an island post

The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies ran two separate postal administrations, one for Naples on the mainland and one for Sicily, the "provinces beyond the lighthouse." A royal decree of July 9, 1857, declared the existing stampless system provisional. Naples got its stamps on January 1, 1858; Sicily waited another year.

The minister in charge, Giovanni Cassisi, sent the printer Giuseppe La Barbera to France to study printing methods, and La Barbera proposed putting the king's portrait on the stamps. The engraving went to Tommaso Aloysio Juvara, known as "Masino," a professor of engraving at the Naples Academy of Fine Arts, who made eight engravings: one for the upper part of the stamp and seven for the lower part carrying the values. A plan to use a printing machine bought in Paris failed; the machine was never put to work. Production went back to La Barbera, using the Palermo print shop of Francesco Lao, where copper plates of 100 stamps were made by electrotyping and printed in intaglio on three presses.

A royal decree of November 29, 1858, announced the issue, and seven stamps went on sale on January 1, 1859, from 1/2 grana to 50 grana, each in a different color. Some writers claim the colors were chosen so that no combination could form the Italian tricolor; others note that Cassisi's correspondence only warns against color combinations the king would dislike. The stamps were canceled with a special "horseshoe" postmark, designed so the ink would frame rather than deface the king's face.

Blue instead of orange

Because there were no ready-made printing inks, the printers mixed their own from base colors batch by batch, which is why the issue is full of shades. At some point at least one sheet of the 1/2 grana, from the second plate, was inked in the blue used for the 2 grana. How it happened is unknown.

Collectors argued for years over whether the two blue stamps were true errors or color trials that had been stolen and used to cheat the post. The error view prevailed, in part because both stamps can be plated to specific positions on the production plate: 60 and 72 of the second plate. One philatelic historian points out the puzzle that remains: if a whole sheet of 100 was misprinted, not one of the other 98 has ever turned up, used or unused.

Both stamps were canceled with the regular horseshoe postmark and show no sign of postage due. A blue 1/2 grana looked like a 2-grana stamp, so a clerk would have read the pair as 4 grana of postage, which is why some writers suspect a deliberate postal fraud.

One letter, two stamps

Both stamps paid postage on the same letter, sent from Palermo on April 21, 1859, to Syracuse. One account names the addressee as the Cavaliere Sebastiano Cultrera Ascenzo di Montesano; others make Cultrera the addressee's heir. Late in the nineteenth century a relative who collected stamps noticed the unusual franking, peeled off one stamp, the less attractive of the two by one account, and left the other on the letter.

A postcard of 1892 shows the stamps being offered for sale. Its sender, Gaetano Cardinale, deputy secretary of the Italian Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs, wrote to a Belgian stamp dealer offering "two stamps of exceptional rarity," a light-blue and a dark-blue half grano of Sicily, used and guaranteed genuine, at 10 francs each, noting that they were not listed in the dealer's catalog. The dealer's answer is not known.

The letter was later cut down to a large fragment. It is often said to have belonged to Philipp von Ferrary, the greatest collector of his age, but one philatelic historian notes that it does not appear in the Ferrary auctions. The Italian collector Achillito Chiesa showed it at a national exhibition in 1929, and on May 29, 1941, the expert Emilio Diena certified it as genuine and placed the stamp at position 60 of the second plate. It then passed to the collectors Alfredo Gerli and Giuseppe Barcella and was shown at an exhibition in New York in 1996.

The detached single went into the album of Prince Doria Pamphili. It appeared at the Manchester philatelic exhibition of 1899; one account says both stamps were shown there. The prince left his Italian States collection to the Royal Philatelic Society London, which sold it at auction in London on November 19, 1963, when the single was bought at its opening price of £5,000 by the Belgian property magnate René Berlingin. Renato Mondolfo certified it in 1970 as faulty and placed it at position 72. In 1984 it sold at auction in Switzerland for about 60,000 Swiss francs. Saverio Imperato exhibited it in Milan in 1998 and, most recently, in Bologna in October 2016, and it was offered privately in 2022 at "price on request."

Basel, 2011, and Paris, 2025

In June 2011 the fragment was sold at auction in Basel, Switzerland, to an unnamed online bidder in the United States. The seller was described only as being based in France. Reports at the time gave the price as about US$2.6 million; in euros it is reported as €1.8 million in English-language accounts and €1.86 million in Italian ones, against an opening figure of €1.5 million. It was announced as the most expensive Italian stamp and the second most expensive stamp in the world.

Not everyone believed it. One Italian philatelic writer noted that the buyer was never identified, that the sale drew little of the attention such a record usually does, and that some collectors thought the price so high as to make them doubt it was real. The fragment later changed hands privately through a French firm, according to the same writer.

In December 2025 the fragment came back to auction in a joint Milan and Paris sale, with an opening bid of €250,000 and an estimate of €250,000 to €500,000. It was offered in Paris on December 17. The organizers' preview called it the rarest stamp of the entire Italian area and said it was being offered at auction for the first time, which conflicts with the reported 2011 sale. The result has not been made public.

The end of a kingdom, and of its stamps

The stamps outlived the king they portrayed by barely a year. Ferdinand II died at Caserta on May 22, 1859, a month after the blue half grana were mailed, and was succeeded by his son Francis II. There was no time for a new design: on May 11, 1860, Garibaldi landed at Marsala with the Thousand, and on May 27 a decree issued under his dictatorship abolished the Bourbon stamps. The last known use is from Messina on July 23, 1860. Some postal clerks, one account says, mocked the old regime by turning the horseshoe cancel upside down to form a pair of horns.

The Sicily issue's whole printing came to about 2.85 million stamps, of which postal store records show 2,281,243 sold. Against that, the blue half grana are two. Their fame reached television in 2023, when an episode of the American series The Blacklist was titled "The Sicilian Error of Color" and built its plot around the stamp.

The numbers

Issue date

January 1, 1859

Values in the set

Seven, from 1/2 grana to 50 grana

Quantity known

Two blue 1/2 grana errors (plate II, positions 60 and 72)

Total printing, all values

About 2,850,000; 2,281,243 sold

Sheet

100 stamps, 10 rows of 10

Printing

Intaglio from electrotyped copper plates, three presses, Palermo

Paper

Soft, porous handmade paper bought in Naples, later smoother machine-made Palermo paper; no watermark

Timeline

1. Jul 9, 1857

   A royal decree declares Sicily's stampless postal system provisional.

2. Jan 1, 1858

   Stamps are introduced for the mainland Kingdom of Naples; Sicily waits another year.

3. Nov 29, 1858

   A royal decree announces the Sicilian stamp issue.

4. Jan 1, 1859

   Seven stamps showing Ferdinand II go on sale in Sicily.

5. Apr 21, 1859

   A letter leaves Palermo for Syracuse franked with two 1/2 grana stamps printed in blue.

6. May 22, 1859

   Ferdinand II dies at Caserta; his son Francis II succeeds him.

7. May 27, 1860

   A decree issued under Garibaldi's dictatorship abolishes the Bourbon stamps.

8. Jul 23, 1860

   Last known use of the Sicily issue, at Messina.

9. 1892

   A senior Italian postal official offers the two blue stamps to a Belgian dealer for 10 francs each.

10. 1899

    The detached single, by then in Prince Doria Pamphili's collection, is shown at the Manchester exhibition.

11. 1929

    Achillito Chiesa shows the fragment at a national exhibition in Italy.

12. May 29, 1941

    Emilio Diena certifies the fragment and places the stamp at position 60 of plate II.

13. Nov 19, 1963

    The single is sold at auction in London for £5,000 to René Berlingin.

14. 1970

    Renato Mondolfo certifies the single as faulty and places it at position 72.

15. 1984

    The single sells at auction in Switzerland for about 60,000 Swiss francs.

16. Jun 9, 2011

    The fragment sells at auction in Basel for about US$2.6 million to an online bidder in the United States.

17. Oct 2016

    The single is shown in Bologna.

18. 2022

    The single is offered privately at "price on request."

19. May 21, 2023

    The Blacklist airs an episode titled "The Sicilian Error of Color."

20. Dec 17, 2025

    The fragment is offered at auction in Paris, estimated at €250,000 to €500,000; the result is not published.

The world in 1859

• Apr 25, 1859

  Ground is broken for the Suez Canal in Egypt.

• May 31, 1859

  The Great Clock at the Palace of Westminster, Big Ben, is started in London.

• Jun 4, 1859

  French and Sardinian forces defeat the Austrians at the Battle of Magenta.

• Jun 24, 1859

  Napoleon III defeats the Austrians at the Battle of Solferino.

• Jun 30, 1859

  Charles Blondin crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope for the first time.

• Aug 27, 1859

  Edwin Drake drills the first oil well in the United States, near Titusville, Pennsylvania.

• Oct 16, 1859

  John Brown raids the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

• Nov 24, 1859

  Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.

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, Sicilian Error of Color (1/2 grana blue) is number 4 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 (17 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• In 1892 an official of the Italian postal ministry offered both blue stamps to a dealer for 10 francs each.
• The horseshoe-shaped cancel was designed so the ink would never cross the king's face.
• Ferdinand II died a month after the two blue stamps were mailed.
• After Garibaldi's landing, some clerks are said to have turned the horseshoe cancel upside down to make a pair of horns.
• Only one of the two blue stamps is still on its original letter fragment.
• Writers disagree over whether the seven colors were picked so they could never be combined into the Italian tricolor.