Greece 1861 Large Hermes Head (Solferino Cover)
- Maker
- Kingdom of Greece (Paris printing by E. Meyer)
- Year
- 1861
- Rank
- 61 of 100
Greece 1861 Large Hermes Head (Solferino Cover)
Greece 1861 Large Hermes Head (Solferino Cover) by Kingdom of Greece (Paris printing by E. Meyer) (1861) is ranked 61 in the FLOAT 100 for Stamps. It sold for $380,595 on 1 February 2002. Greece's first stamps; the Solferino Cover is the highest-priced Greek philatelic item ever.
What is it, and why is it in the FLOAT 100?
Greece's first stamps; the Solferino Cover is the highest-priced Greek philatelic item ever.
'The Solferino Cover' — 1871 folded cover Piraeus to Larnaca franked 40-lepta lilac-rose (Large Hermes Head) on greenish paper
What is the best-sourced number for it?
- Figure
- $380,595
- Kind
- Realized at auction
- Date
- 1 February 2002
Exact item match. David Feldman SA's own world-records page states the Solferino Cover — the 1871 (13 July) folded cover Piraeus to Larnaca, Cyprus franked with the 40-lepta Large Hermes Head Solferino in lilac-rose on greenish paper, one of about 13 recorded Solferinos and the only one on full cover — realized CHF 646,250 with buyer's premium in the firm's February 2002 sale of Greece, The Large Hermes Heads: The Collection (I). Feldman's companion article and Museum of Philately independently confirm the same figure; no later resale is recorded, so this remains the last recorded transaction. Converted at CHF 1.6980 per USD (Federal Reserve H.10, 15 Feb 2002) = USD 380,595, the sale-date dollar value. At today's rate the same CHF would be about USD 791,000, which is not used. The source gives the month but not the day, so the date is set to the first of that month.
This is a realized sale. Somebody paid it. Source.
How this is made
- The figure
- One reference price, taken from a named public source and shown with its own kind. FLOAT does not average it with anything or adjust it for time.
- Realized or not
- A realized price is a completed sale. A market asking price and a price-guide value are not sales, and are labeled as such wherever they appear.
- Why no grade ladder
- Most FLOAT 100 entries are individual objects. There is one of this, so there is no population and no spread across grades to show.
- Archive
- 2026-08-08