Here is a globe I did for a level Im planning on making for a class. It's pretty high detail I guess. I decided to give the globe it's own map since I think thats where all the detail is. The stand texture could probably fare to be sized down to a 256.
Mapping a globe is HARD. Especially since I couldnt find an old style interuppted map which represents a flattened sphere. I had to just work around and kind of age and texturize a regular map and work my UVs around that. Theres some obvious pinching if you're looking top-down on the globe which could easily be painted out if I had CS4, but since I dont it would be much more painstaking and I have a whole level left to do so we'll see how that goes.