FLOAT

France 1849 '1 Franc Vermillion' Tete-beche Block

Maker
France (Second Republic)
Year
1849
Rank
67 of 100
Identifier
Yvert 7 tete-beche; the unique mint block of four containing the inverted-cliche tete-beche pair

France 1849 '1 Franc Vermillion' Tete-beche Block

Realized at auction: $1,050,000, dated 2003-11-01. This is a realized sale. Somebody paid it.

What is it, and why is it in the FLOAT 100?

The single most celebrated French philatelic rarity — only one mint block of four with the tete-beche is known.

Yvert 7 tete-beche; the unique mint block of four containing the inverted-cliche tete-beche pair

What is the best-sourced number for it?

Figure
$1,050,000
Kind
Realized at auction
Date
2003-11-01

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, France 1849 '1 Franc Vermillion' Tete-beche Block is number 17 of 99 in the stamps entries of the FLOAT 100. 75 of those 99 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (67 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

How this is made

The figure
One reference price, 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

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