The Ferrary Collection is probably the greatest stamp collection ever.

And its story is one of the great tragedies of stamp collecting.

Broken up for nationalistic, political reasons, the treasures of the most complete collection ever assembled were scattered and will never be brought back together again.

Here we tell the story of Philip Ferrari de la Renotiere, his money and his obsession.

Philip Ferrary was always on the look out for the best stamps in the world.

Who was Ferrary

Ferrary was born Philip Ferrari de la Renotiere on January 11, 1850 in Paris.

His birth name was that of the extraordinarily wealthy family from which he came and that financed his stamp collection.

He was the son of the Duke and Duchess of Galliera, a title originally created by Napoleon and given to a relative as he invaded northern Italy.

His father (at least officially) was mostly a banker - one of the world's biggest at the time - but also invested widely in Europe’s burgeoning industrial development and colonial expansion.

Raffaele de Ferrari was one of the richest men in Europe, but probably not Philip's real father.

Philip’s family’s place in the pan-European aristocratic ruling class that the sun was setting on was vital to his story and to his collection.

His name was adopted after he had renounced all of his family’s titles.

His parentage was the subject of gossip. Was the Duke of Galleria really his father? Or had he adopted an illegitimate child?

Ferrary ditched not just the name but also the family itself and his national identity when he was adopted by an Austrian nobleman, and - crucially for the collection - took up Austrian nationality having previously been Italian (by birth), French by adoption. He was subsequently a Swiss citizen and possibly a Serbian national too.

The chief fact of Ferrary’s prowess as a collector is his wealth.

His father allegedly - and this has the ring of an unkind, apocryphal story - died while lost inside a giant safe in which he kept just some of his cash.

And the chief fact of the downfall of his collection is his uncertain nationality.

After World War I his Austrian nationality was used as a mechanism to seize the Ferrary collection as war reparations for France.

From 1921 to 1926, in what must be the most extraordinary sales in stamp collecting history, the collection was sold off by auction.

The Ferrary Collection

Ferrary inherited around £5 million (120 million francs) as a young man.

He was already a collector by this stage.

A modest home in central Paris, now the residence of France's presidents.

When he was adopted on his father’s death it was with the help of an introduction by Sigmund Friedl, a veteran Austrian stamp dealer (who is notorious for perforating his own stamps and even forging them).

If you’ve done even a small amount of research on the greatest rarities in philately, you will have come across the Ferrary name.

He seems to have owned all of them.

Most famously he had the:

• unique (known) Treskilling Yellow, a Swedish error
• the British Guiana 1-cent 1856 “black and magenta”
• the only mint 2-cent 1851 Hawaii Missionary 
• the “Bordeaux Cover” that held both Mauritius Post Office values

The most important thing about the Tresklling Yellow is that it wasn't supposed to be yellow.

With enormous wealth and living in what was to become the official residence of the Presidents of Franced, Ferrary seems to have been pretty much a full-time collector.

He employed a consultant, Pierre Mahe, a well-known dealer in his own right, and two secretaries devoted solely to the upkeep and storage of his collection.

It had its own room in his apartments, lavishly appointed to keep the world’s greatest collection in the best condition possible.

He ventured around Europe and was so careless in his spending that he existed as an individual force in the collecting market. If Ferrary wanted it, he would probably get it.

His demand was so famous that a minor industry grew up among forgers creating pieces specifically to meet his desires. “Ferrarities” they were called.

His collection was global in scope, and swallowed up many previously world-leading collections, including the Philbrick Collection (which itself included the first big French collection); Sir Daniel Cooper’s collection; the Australian collection of WB Thornhill.

He was spending up to £4,000 a year at Stanley Gibbons alone. That’s almost certainly over £0.6 million in 2024 pounds. 

The British Guiana 1-cent is usually described as the world's most famous rarity, and has four times been the world's most expensive single stamp at auction.

Shortly we’re going to mourn the splitting up of Ferrary’s collection.

But few people saw it while he was alive. It’s been reported that he didn’t want anyone to know what was missing from what he wanted to be the most complete collection in the world.

It would have been seen though.

Ferrary willed his collection to the German nation along with the money to keep it up on display in the Berlin Postmuseum.

He wrote his will in 1915. Not a great time to be resident in France and supportive of the German state.

And that was the problem.

Instead of the greatest museum display in philatelic history, the Ferrary Collection became a revenue raising opportunity for the French government, who included its sale in the Treaty of Versailles.

David Lloyd George, Vittorio Orlando, Georges Clemenceau, and Woodrow Wilson at Versailles discussing the fate of Germany, and the Ferrary Collection.

He died on May 20, 2017. His collection was abandoned - in several hundred albums - in the Austrian embassy in Paris.

Ferrary ran to Switzerland but didn’t live out the war.

The sales were the greatest in stamp collecting history. Fourteen of them in series from 1921 to 1926.

They brought in 30 million francs.

As a comparison, the French government’s total projected revenue for 1920 was nearly 16 billion francs.

The Ferrary collection legacy

The sales were the making of some other big collections.

Philatelic historians say the auctions helped the hobby develop.

Perhaps Ferarry’s completist domination of the scene was bad for the scene as a whole.

The Hind collection got the 1c magenta.

The Treskilling Yellow went on a journey to King Carol II of Romania.

We know that George V was bidding - sometimes unsuccessfully - at the auctions.

“Ferrary Collection“ on a stamp at auction is a great plus for selling any rare stamp.

It can feel as if almost every significant item in postal history that predates Ferrary was in his collection.

It’s an unfalsifiable statement, but it’s almost certainly the case that the Ferrary Collection was the greatest ever.

A fitting tribute in the shape of a 1968 stamp from Liechtenstein.

His most appropriate honour may be the 1968 Liechtenstein, 30 rp red brown stamp on which he is pictured. It is not rare or valuable.

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