Wow! Yesterday I caught a first rare american stamp from day since I started this blog. Its a Scott #245, $5 cent stamp – 1893 for the Columbian Exposition. The stamps a mint, unused with original gum, never hinged. Winning bid: US $1,252.50. (Scott value $8,000-9,000.)

The World’s Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893, was the last and the greatest of the nineteenth century’s World’s Fairs. Nominally a celebration of Columbus’ voyages 400 years prior, the Exposition was in actuality a reflection and celebration of American culture and society–for fun, edification, and profit–and a blueprint for life in modern and postmodern.