The 150th anniversary of the Durheim issues was celebrated 25 years ago. At that time I wrote an article for our Honegger catalogue 2000 , which displayed on the title page the undisputedly genuine and impeccable rarest cover of the Durheim issue.

I will leave out the 16I cover in the Museum of Museum of Communication in Berne because this museum cover has been withdrawn from the collector's world and will hardly be available on the open market. In this quarter of a century many large and very large rarities of old Swiss issues have passed through my hands.
For example, covers to extremely rare destinations. But these were not Durheim issues, because various manufacturers were involved. Therein lies the why I chose this cover once again for our next catalogue, because this unique cash on delivery from Thun to Frutigen is still for me the rarest and most significant Durheim cover.
First an explanation: Carl Durheim (1810-1890) was one of the first full-time photographers in Switzerland.

As a lithographer, he also dedicated himself to printing the first Swiss stamps using the lithographic process. These were the catalogue numbers 13-20. Initially, the stamps were printed in two different colours, later in three and finally, due to time constraints, only a single colour. After each colour print, the printed sheet was hung up to dry and could only be used again the next day to print the next colour. The sequence of colours changed. Now a mishap occurred that gave us one of the greatest rarities in classic Swiss philately. A printed sheet was already printed with the black and red colours. To print the yellow colour, the printer inserted the sheet into the printing press upside down.

This resulted in the world-famous ‘upside-down yellow printing’! You can see what this looks like, in the detail image:

What kind of numbers does our front cover picture show? One is a local post stamp, number 13I, together with a dark blue Rayon, number 15II, and a yellow Rayon II, This three-colour combination alone is very rare. We have not yet noted more than 6 examples of this (in various states of preservation), which is why this combination alone is valued at 40,000 in the catalogue. In our example the yellow rayon is now joined by variety 2, i.e. the upside-down yellow print which alone is valued at CHF 300’000 on cover: Together in the three-colour franking would of course be much higher, but there is no valuation for this in the catalogue, because it is a pure collector's item.

So far, we know of a letter with this ‘reversed yellow printing’ from the Anderegg collection, which is now in what is probably the largest collection of old Swiss stamps in Switzerland, the Seeland collection, which is not only specialised in old Switzerland, but also of Swiss philately as a whole.

The second example is our cover picture. There are no other known covers with it.
I have been fascinated by this rarity all my life and for decades I pursued all these items as far as I could. During his lifetime, Dr Streiff knew six examples of this ‘Inverted yellow print’, Werner Städeli told me of eight. After many years, I succeeded to track down and document a total of 14 of these rarities. However, these are not on the open market (some are in museums). Dr Streiff said that there was only one sheet with this variety.

And since the A1 printing block was printed in two sheets of 40, that would make a total of 80 of these misprints, which should exist. Proof that there were two printed sheets has not yet been possible, because none of the known types has been found twice.

This is in contrast to the light blue rayons with a full cross border, where a sheet field with a complete cross border has been discovered twice! A comparison with the yellow rayons with a full cross border is interesting. There they appear on two printing stones:

Stone A1: 13 loose pieces, 1 cover and 4 covers, catalogue prices: loose = 220’ 000.--, cover 440’ 000.-- Stone A3: 18 loose items, 2 pairs, 2 covers, plus a cover with a strip of three in the museum in Berne.

Catalogue prices: loose = 170’ 000.--, covers 400’ 000.--.

If one wants to say something about the rarity of the ‘inverted yellow prints, it is much rarer than a full cross border of the yellow rayons and this is a pure Durheim franking.

If you also consider the rarity of the tricolour franking, you will understand why such a piece can be enjoyed for a lifetime.

Whether my son would be convinced by a generous and fair offer to initiate a sales transaction you'll have to ask him yourself!What the Bordeaux cover is to collectors of the first Mauritius stamps, our title picture is to philatelists of Classic Switzerland philately! Unrivalled in quality, beauty and rarity!