Mauritius POST OFFICE stamps do not appear on the market often. If they appear, they are usually sold for a record amount.

It was no different on June 26, 2021 in the southern German town of Bietigheim-Bissingen. Christoph Gärtner GmbH auction house auctioned several very rare items of world philately as part of its 50th anniversary auction. Among them was an envelope with the Mauritius Post Office one penny red-orange stamp.

The letter was sent on September 27, 1847 in Port Louis and addressed to H. Adam Esq. Jr. The sender was Lady Gomm, the wife of the local governor, who held a ball the following weekend. Since then, this envelope has come a long way and changed owners many times. Here is an overview of the owners, as listed on the website of the above-mentioned auction house:

1847 H. Adam received the envelope containing an invitation to Lady Gomm's ball
1899 Th. Lemaire bought the envelope from H. Adam
1899 W.H. Peckitt bought the cover from Lemaire
1899 H.J. Duveen bought the cover from Peckitt
1909 Peckitt again got possesion of the cover
1909 H.P. Manus obtained the envelope from Peckitt
1933 Auction: Plumridge & Co Manus Sale (lot 1): Purchased by Tom Allen.
193(?) Acquired by King Carol of Romania
1950 Sold privately to René Berlingin
1971 Stanley Gibbons Anphilex sale New York bought by Hiroyuki Kanai
1986 Consigned to David Feldman Geneva
1988 Sold to two professionals together with the Kanai collection
1993 David Feldman sale (lot 452)
1997 David Feldman SA private sale
2006 David Feldman sold the cover to Vikram Chand
2021 The cover is offered at the 50th Christoph Gärtner Jubilee auction

As you can see, this envelope does not appear on the market very often, in average once every 11 years. It is not known whether the last seller was Singaporean businessman Vikram Chand, but it can be assumed. Unless he has sold the envelope in a private transaction to someone else between 2006 and 2021.

Anyway, he also made quite a lot of money on it. His purchase price was USD 3 million in 2006, so the sale after 15 years for EUR 8.1 million (USD 9.64 million) is not bad at all (certainly, it is necessary to deduct auction fees, which in this case are unknown and could have been just a few percent only).

As a reminder, only 3 copies of these Ball Invitation covers have been preserved to this day. One is in the British Royal Collection (the recipient of the letter was Ed. Duvivier Esq.), The other is in the so-called Tapling Collection of the British Library (the recipient of the letter was Monsieur Alcide Marquay), and this is the only privately owned one.

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