Mauritius 'Post Office' 1d Penny
- Maker
- Mauritius (British colony)
- Year
- 1847
- Rank
- 3 of 100
- Identifier
- 1d orange-red, inscribed 'POST OFFICE' (not the later 'POST PAID'), engraved by J.O. Barnard; the 'Bombay cover' bears two 1d examples
Mauritius 'Post Office' 1d Penny
Realized at auction: $2,500,000, dated 2020-12-01. This is a realized sale. Somebody paid it.
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
- 2020-12-01
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, Mauritius 'Post Office' 1d Penny is number 5 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 (3 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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