Mauritius 'Post Office' 1d Penny
- Maker
- Mauritius (British colony)
- Year
- 1847
- Rank
- 3 of 100
Mauritius 'Post Office' 1d Penny
Mauritius 'Post Office' 1d Penny by Mauritius (British colony) (1847) is ranked 3 in the FLOAT 100 for Stamps. It sold for $2,500,000 on 1 December 2020. Among the first British-colonial stamps and one of philately's supreme rarities — only ~26 of the 1d survive across all states.
What is it, and why is it in the FLOAT 100?
Among the first British-colonial stamps and one of philately's supreme rarities — only ~26 of the 1d survive across all states.
1d orange-red, inscribed 'POST OFFICE' (not the later 'POST PAID'), engraved by J.O. Barnard; the 'Bombay cover' bears two 1d examples
What is the best-sourced number for it?
- Figure
- $2,500,000
- Kind
- Realized at auction
- Date
- 1 December 2020
David Feldman, Geneva, Dec 2020: the 'Bombay cover' franked with two 1d 'Post Office' stamps hammered EUR 2,000,000 (>$2.5M with 20% premium). NOTE: figure is for the famous COVER bearing two 1d stamps, not a single loose 1d. Single-stamp benchmark (Feldman, Kanai sale, 1993): 1d orange = $1,072,260.
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