July 1 in Swedish History

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  On July 1st in 1855, the first Swedish stamp was published. Above, a fairly old Swedish stamp and for sure one of the most valuable. The “Treskilling Yellow”, or the “Gul tre skilling banco”, a Swedish postage stamp known to exist in only one copy, and it holds the world's record sale price at auction for a postage stamp. This stamp was canceled at Nya Kopparberget (now known as Kopparberg) on July 13, 1857. The color on the stamp is an error: 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. The stamp has been in the hands of many owners, and during the last auction, in 2010, it was bought for $2.3 million.

• July 1 in Swedish History
  1855: Sweden’s first stamp is published. The stamp had been invented by English merchant William Dockwra and his partner Robert Murray in 1680. Soon other countries followed; in 1841 and 1842 a few local stamps were published in the US, in 1843 it was Brazil’s turn. In 1851 the first stamps came out in Denmark, followed by Sweden and Norway in 1855, and Finland in 1856. The motif on the Swedish stamps was the coat of arms of Sweden.