08 June 2010

Sometimes it's better not to be green

Meet the three-skilling yellow. 

In 1855 Sweden issued its first postage stamps.  Printing technology at the time involved creating individual cliches for each stamp in a pane, then assembling them for printing.  Somehow an error occurred, and a three-skilling design (which was supposed to be printed in green) was inserted into the 10x10 array of 8-skilling stamps.  The result was an unknown number of 3-skilling stamps printed in yellow.  The one above just sold at auction for an undisclosed price reported to be between 1.5 and 2.0 million euros.

Noone knows how many of these were printed. Check your attic.

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