The most valuable and probably the most famous Hungarian major error belongs to the Crowned Madonna series printed between 1921 and 1925, designed by Ferenc Helbing. The stamps were printed in two colours and two stages, with the frame and the centre printed separately. On the 5,000-korona value, however, the paper was accidentally inserted upside down for the second pass, so on one sheet the Madonna wearing the Holy Crown in the centre of the design was rotated by 180 degrees. Because the vignette remained almost symmetrically positioned in the centre and the two printed areas were similar in size, the displacement was not very conspicuous and the inspectors failed to notice the error.
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One sheet of 100 error stamps entered postal circulation. The mistake was discovered soon afterwards, but by then about 80 examples had already been sold at a nearby tobacconist’s shop. A substantial proportion of those 80 stamps were subsequently lost or destroyed; judging from auction appearances, estimates suggest that around 20 may now be in the hands of collectors and museums. Of course, it is not impossible that another one or two are still hiding in a forgotten great-grandfather’s album at the bottom of a drawer. Cancelled examples have a catalogue value of around 4 million forints, while completely sound unused examples without a cancellation are catalogued at around 6 million. Their real market value is also close to these astronomical figures.
Naturally, forged examples of the error have also appeared. One characteristic is that the centre is well centred on the forgery, whereas on the genuine error it is slightly displaced. Because this is such a rare and valuable major error, further and increasingly sophisticated forgeries can be expected to appear.