The “Treskilling Yellow” Postage Stamp Women’s Tee

The “Treskilling” Yellow (Swedish: Gul tre skilling banco, literally “yellow three skilling banco”), is a Swedish postage stamp of which only one example is known to exist. It is an extremely valuable stamp (if not the most valuable in the world if we actually only knew its most recent sale price, which has been kept confidential).

It was issued in Sweden in 1855. At that time, five different stamps were issued including three- and eight-skilling ones. The three-skilling ones were green. The eight-skilling was yellow. One day, the three-skilling stamp was issued in yellow. It is possible that the printers forgot to change the paint and issued a sheet of yellow three-skilling stamps by mistake. This stamp was cancelled at Nya Kopparberget (now known as Kopparberg), about 150 kilometers (93 mi) from Uppsala, on July 13, 1857.

Despite that the whole sheet was probably printed, at present, only one yellow stamp has been found. Could it be that the remaining sheet of stamps is out there somewhere? Maybe. It might be worth checking out old letters, especially if you have any Swedish connections in your history.

This single stamp was last sold in 2010. The auction house valued the stamp between £1.29 million and £1.73 million before the sale. The winning bid was kept confidential.