Treskilling Yellow (Tre Skilling Banco colour error)

Sweden's first stamps

On October 25, 1854, Sweden's parliament, the Riksdag, set a single domestic letter rate that applied regardless of distance. The decision to introduce uniform postage and stamps was confirmed on March 9, 1855. The contract to make the stamps went to Count Pehr Ambjörn Sparre, an inventor who set up a printing house in Stockholm in early 1855 with two presses and a staff of three.

Sparre signed the approved design and cut the master die himself. The Post Office rejected his first die, and it had to be redone. The stamps were printed by letterpress, with raised areas of the plate carrying the ink, and Sparre perforated whole sheets at once on a 'harrow' machine he built. His first delivery, due by June 2, 1855, was late. On June 12 he delivered 6,569 full sheets, three weeks before the stamps went on sale.

Sweden's first stamps went on sale on July 1, 1855. All five values showed the Swedish coat of arms and the word 'SVERIGE' and were denominated in skilling banco, from 3 to 24 skilling. The 3 skilling was printed in blue-green and the 8 skilling in yellowish orange. The issue lasted three years. On July 1, 1858, Sweden switched to öre and riksdaler and issued new stamps in the same design but slightly smaller.

How a green stamp came out yellow

No one knows exactly what happened. The most widely accepted explanation is about how the plates were built. Each plate was assembled by hand from 100 individual stereotypes, small cast copies of the die, laid out ten by ten. If one stereotype on an 8 skilling plate was damaged and a worker replaced it by mistake with a 3 skilling stereotype, every sheet printed from that plate would contain one 3 skilling value printed in the 8 skilling's yellow.

That would also explain why the error went unnoticed. One wrong value among 99 correct ones in the same color is easy to miss, both for the printer's checker and for the postal clerk who sold the stamp at the 8 skilling rate. Experts in a 2013 London court case agreed that the error arose during the seventh of the eight deliveries of skilling stamps, and that only about 10 percent of skilling stamps have survived. How many yellow 3 skilling stamps were printed is unknown.

The surviving stamp was canceled at Nya Kopparberget, now Kopparberg, on July 13, 1857, before the eighth delivery was printed. It is not in perfect condition. It has a cut at the upper left, and its top margin has been reperforated at some point.

From an attic to a king's collection

In 1885 or 1886 (sources disagree on the year), a teenage collector named Georg Wilhelm Backman was going through old letters at his grandmother's farm, Väster Munga, north of Västerås. On one he found a 3 skilling stamp in the wrong color. He sold it to the Stockholm stamp dealer Heinrich Lichtenstein for 7 kronor.

The stamp changed hands several times. In 1894 Sigmund Friedl sold it for 4,000 florins to Philipp von Ferrary, who then owned the largest stamp collection in the world. Collectors kept searching, but no second example turned up, and over time it became clear that this one might be the only survivor.

Ferrary's collection was sold off in the 1920s, and the Swedish baron Eric Leijonhufvud bought the yellow stamp. Claes A. Tamm paid £1,500 for it in 1926 to complete his collection of Swedish stamps. Lawyer Johan Ramberg bought it for £2,000 in 1928 and kept it for nine years. In 1937 King Carol II of Romania, a keen collector, bought it at auction in London for £5,000. In 1950 it went to Rene Berlingen for an undisclosed sum.

Its authenticity has been challenged and confirmed more than once. One account says a court ruled it genuine in 1932 and that experts confirmed it again in 1975, using crystallography among other tests to show that its paper and ink match the 8 skilling yellow. In the 1970s the Swedish Postal Museum declared it a forgery, which caused a controversy. Two separate commissions examined it and concluded it was genuine.

Three world records, then secrecy

In 1984 the stamp sold at auction in Switzerland for a world-record price, reported as 977,500 Swiss francs in one source and 997,500 in another. In 1990 it sold at auction again for 1,897,500 Swiss francs, reported as more than $1 million. In November 1996 it set a third record at auction, at 2,875,000 Swiss francs according to the auctioneer (rounded to 2.88 million in some reports). That was about $2.3 million at the time, though one account gives $2.2 million. It was the highest price ever paid for a single stamp until the British Guiana one-cent magenta sold for about $9.5 million in 2014.

After 1996 the stamp's ownership became hard to follow. One report says the owner was described only as 'an individual of a magnetic interest for the media.' Banks and investors held it at various times.

On May 22, 2010, it was auctioned again in Geneva. The auctioneer said the owner had given the stamp as a pledge, as financial security. Bidders were vetted, took part by telephone and were sworn to secrecy. The auctioneer said it sold to an international consortium for at least its 1996 price, and the consortium called it 'a solid investment in these times of crisis.' A later report said the buyer was the dealer Armand Rousso and that he paid slightly less than the 1996 record. The two accounts cannot both be right, and the price has never been confirmed.

In May 2013 Count Gustaf Douglas, a Swedish nobleman, politician and serious philatelist, bought the stamp by private treaty. He showed it at the Royal Philatelic Society London on October 31, 2013. One account dates his purchase to 2010, but reports from 2013 and other accounts of his life give May 2013. The price was not disclosed.

The trunk that held nine more

In or before 2012, Jean-Claude Andre and his wife Jane sued Clydesdale Bank in London's High Court. They said a trunk they had left at the bank from 1986 to 2004 held six covers carrying nine Treskilling Yellows, and that the lock had been removed and the covers taken. An expert valued the covers at about £3.7 million. In a judgment dated January 31 and February 1, 2013, the court rejected the claim. It found the Andres unreliable witnesses and the story marked by 'sheer inherent implausibility.' The stamp found by Backman is still the only one known.

The stamp has shown up beyond philately. It is the subject of several books, including a 185-page 2004 history, and the name 'The Treskilling Yellow' has been registered as a trade name. In season six of the television series 'White Collar,' the con man Neal Caffrey has to steal it as part of a heist.

The numbers

Issue date

July 1, 1855 (first Swedish stamps)

Set

Five values, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 24 skilling banco, coat of arms design, inscribed 'SVERIGE'

Printing

Letterpress (typography) by Count Pehr Ambjörn Sparre's printing house, Stockholm

Perforation

14, applied by a harrow machine that perforated a whole sheet at once

Plate

100 stereotypes in a 10 by 10 arrangement, the basis of the accepted explanation for the error

Normal color

3 skilling: blue-green. 8 skilling: yellowish orange

Known copies of the error

1

Cancellation

Nya Kopparberget, July 13, 1857

Condition

Cut at upper left; top margin reperforated

Weight

About 0.02675 grams

Timeline

1. Oct 25, 1854

   Sweden's parliament adopts a uniform domestic letter rate.

2. Jun 12, 1855

   Pehr Ambjörn Sparre delivers the first 6,569 sheets of stamps.

3. Jul 1, 1855

   Sweden's first stamps go on sale: five skilling banco values with the coat of arms.

4. Jul 13, 1857

   The surviving yellow 3 skilling is canceled at Nya Kopparberget.

5. Jul 1, 1858

   Sweden adopts öre currency, ending the skilling stamps.

6. 1885

   Georg Wilhelm Backman finds the stamp on a family letter and sells it for 7 kronor. Some sources give 1886.

7. 1894

   Philipp von Ferrary buys it for 4,000 florins.

8. 1926

   Claes A. Tamm buys it for £1,500 after the Ferrary sales.

9. 1928

   Lawyer Johan Ramberg buys it for £2,000.

10. 1937

    King Carol II of Romania buys it at auction in London for £5,000.

11. 1950

    Rene Berlingen acquires it for an undisclosed sum.

12. The Swedish Postal Museum declares it a forgery. Two commissions find it genuine.

13. 1984

    It sells at auction in Switzerland for a world-record price for a stamp.

14. 1990

    It sells again for 1,897,500 Swiss francs, a second world record.

15. Nov 1996

    It sets a third record, about $2.3 million at auction.

16. May 22, 2010

    It is auctioned in Geneva after its owner pledged it as financial security. The buyer and price are kept secret.

17. Feb 1, 2013

    A London court rejects a claim that nine more Treskilling Yellows were stolen from a bank trunk.

18. May 2013

    Count Gustaf Douglas buys the stamp by private treaty.

19. Oct 31, 2013

    Douglas shows it at the Royal Philatelic Society London.

20. 2014

    The British Guiana one-cent magenta passes its record price for a single stamp.

The world in 1855

• Mar 2, 1855

  Alexander II becomes tsar of Russia.

• May 15, 1855

  The Exposition Universelle, an early world's fair, opens in Paris.

• Jul 4, 1855

  Walt Whitman publishes 'Leaves of Grass' in Brooklyn.

• Sep 9, 1855

  In the Crimean War, Sevastopol falls to French and British troops.

• Oct 17, 1855

  Henry Bessemer files his British patent for the Bessemer steelmaking process.

• Nov 17, 1855

  David Livingstone becomes the first European to see Victoria Falls.

• Mar 6, 1857

  The U.S. Supreme Court decides Dred Scott v. Sandford.

• Mar 23, 1857

  Elisha Otis's first passenger elevator is installed at 488 Broadway in New York.

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, Treskilling Yellow (Tre Skilling Banco colour error) is number 7 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 (2 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The teenager who found the stamp sold it for 7 kronor.
• The stamp weighs about 0.027 grams. One writer worked out that at its auction prices it was worth about $32 billion a pound.
• Sweden's own Postal Museum once declared it a forgery. Two commissions later found it genuine.
• When it was auctioned in 2010, every bidder was sworn to secrecy, and the price has never been confirmed.
• A London court threw out a 2013 claim that nine more Treskilling Yellows had been stolen from a bank trunk, citing the claim's 'sheer inherent implausibility.'
• A U.S. stamp expert said the story of the schoolboy finding it may be apocryphal, because a similar story is told about the British Guiana one-cent magenta.
• The heist plot of a 'White Collar' episode turns on stealing the stamp.