US 1893 Columbian $5 'Columbus'

A stamp for a world's fair

In the late 1880s American cities competed to host a world's fair. On February 24, 1890, Congress chose Chicago, and within months the event became the World's Columbian Exposition, marking the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's first voyage. Postmaster General John Wanamaker took up the idea of honoring the event with special stamps, and the result was the Columbian Exposition Issue of 1893, the first commemorative stamps the United States ever issued.

The set was enormous by the standards of the day. Fifteen values went on sale at the start of January 1893: a dealer account says the stamps were placed on sale January 1 in New York and Boston, while most post offices, closed for the holiday, opened sales on January 2. An 8-cent value was added in March to pay a newly lowered registration fee. For the first time, the series included stamps of $1, $2, $3, $4 and $5; no U.S. postage stamp before had cost more than 90 cents. The full set cost $16.34, of which the five dollar-denominated values made up $15.

None of the dollar values was meant to pay a specific rate. The Smithsonian's National Postal Museum concludes that their function seems to have been to publicize the fair and raise revenue: printing cost about the same for any denomination, so the high values carried a large profit. In practice, collectors and dealers used them to overpay ordinary domestic postage on souvenir covers, and in a few cases they paid heavy foreign parcel rates.

The engravers and the portrait

The American Bank Note Company held the stamp contract, but the Columbians' large size required a special agreement. Wanamaker signed it without competitive bidding, letting the company charge 17 cents per thousand stamps against the 7.45 cents it charged for the regular 1890 stamps. The arrangement drew public criticism, and Wilson Bissell, who became Postmaster General when Grover Cleveland returned to office in March 1893, tried to renegotiate it.

Alfred Jones, an English-born engraver then past seventy, engraved the Columbus portrait, and Charles Skinner engraved the two figures that flank it. Jones had finished his apprenticeship in 1841, and his own firm became part of American Bank Note in 1859. He also engraved the portrait for the Columbian half dollar that the U.S. Mint struck for the fair. On the coin Columbus faces left; on the stamp he faces right.

Neither image is a portrait from life. Collector accounts trace the profile to a Columbus medal or metal cast associated with the New York sculptor Olin L. Warner, made in Madrid. One auction description summarized the chain: the half dollar was based on the original medal, and the stamp's design was taken from that, leaving it twice removed from the source.

A craze, and a backlash

The Columbians caused a sensation. Collectors lined up to buy them, some postal clerks refused to sell them because demand outran supply, and the craze ran even hotter in Europe, where a corner of the Hamburg stock exchange was given over to trading them. On August 11, 1893, The New York Times reported that the stamps were handled there "as carefully as they handled the highest gilt-edged securities."

Not everyone approved. An organization called the Society for the Suppression of Speculative Stamps was formed in protest, arguing that the fair did not deserve commemorative postage, and some collectors objected to the Post Office profiting from their hobby. The Chicago Tribune mocked the $5 stamp, saying it could be used for only one purpose: mailing a 62.5-pound package of books at the book rate.

The fair itself, the "White City," opened on Chicago's lakefront on May 1, 1893, and drew twenty-seven million visitors over the next seven months. It opened days before the Panic of 1893 plunged the country into depression. The set's $16.34 face was a substantial sum in 1893, and only a small number of the most expensive values were sold.

How many, and what survives

The American Bank Note Company printed 27,350 copies of the $5. The Post Office sold 21,844. The Columbians came off sale on April 12, 1894, and the unsold stock was destroyed; one history gives the remaining 5,506 copies of the $5 as destroyed by the Post Office Department in June 1899. The museum, for comparison, estimates that only about 6,000 of the unwatermarked 1894 $5 Marshall that followed were issued.

Because the stamp was expensive and famous from the day it appeared, collectors saved a large share of it. A 2004 study by a leading New York expert committee counted 1,413 unused $5 Columbians it had certified as of March 2004. Time has taken its toll, though. Of 1,818 submissions from 1945 to February 2004, only 870 were genuine with no defects; 222 were regummed and 225 had reperforated edges. Only 48 percent of all submissions were free of faults.

Never-hinged copies are the true rarity. For more than a century collectors proudly hinged the top value of the set into their albums, and most never-hinged survivors come from broken blocks. The committee certified only 10 never-hinged copies between August 1993 and February 2004. It has never received an unused copy with a straight edge for certification, even though every original pane included five straight-edge stamps.

Multiples and covers are rarer still. The largest reported multiple is a block of 14 without gum; the largest numbered plate multiple is an imprint plate number block of eight; 17 blocks of four were recorded. Only sixteen covers bearing the stamp had been certified. The largest recorded usage of Columbian stamps is $49.34 in postage on a piece of a registered package wrapper mailed from Bangor, Maine, on February 19, 1897, with a strip of three $5 stamps and a single.

Identifying a genuine $5 Columbian

The stamp is printed in black in the wide horizontal format shared by the whole Columbian set, about 1 inch tall by 1 1/2 inches wide. The center shows Columbus in profile facing right inside a circle, with a standing figure engraved by Skinner on each side.

Because it is valuable, it has been heavily doctored. The committee's records show the common problems: regumming, reperforation on any of the four sides (most often the top), thins and tears, and altered items such as fake cancels and perforated proofs. Used blocks bearing bull's-eye target cancels are believed to carry non-contemporary markings. The committee's advice is plain: get a certificate before buying or selling one.

The yardstick of a collection

The National Postal Museum calls the $5 the issue's most famous stamp and says it has "an almost mystical aura in the United States philatelic community." The philatelic historian Lester Brookman described it as "the very peak of desire for a great many collectors," and the 2008 book 100 Greatest American Stamps ranked it fourth. The stamp author Max Johl wrote that the degree of completion of the Columbian set is often the yardstick by which a U.S. collection is measured.

In the salesroom, ordinary hinged copies sold in 2015 for roughly $600 to $1,000, and used copies for about $375 to $800. The very best bring far more. In December 2010 a never-hinged copy graded XF-Superb 95, one of only three at that grade, sold for $65,000. In March 2011 a lightly hinged corner-margin copy graded Superb 98, from the collection known as Beverly Hills, sold for $13,000, and a never-hinged Very Fine copy brought $6,250.

The Columbians were also the last U.S. postage stamps made by a private printer for decades. In 1894 the Bureau of Engraving and Printing underbid American Bank Note for the contract, and the $5 Columbian's slow sales shaped what came next: dealers who had been disappointed by it bought few of the Bureau's $5 Marshall when it appeared in December 1894.

The numbers

Issue date

January 1, 1893 (New York and Boston); January 2 elsewhere

Quantity printed

27,350

Quantity sold

21,844

Unused copies certified

1,413 by one expert committee as of March 2004; 10 never hinged, August 1993 to February 2004

Covers certified

16

Printing

Engraved, printed in black by the American Bank Note Company

Face value

$5, top value of a 16-stamp set totaling $16.34

Timeline

1. Feb 24, 1890

   Congress selects Chicago to host the world's fair, soon renamed the World's Columbian Exposition.

2. Dec 24, 1890

   President Benjamin Harrison invites all nations to take part in the commemoration.

3. 1892

   Alfred Jones, past seventy, begins engraving the Columbian Exposition Issue.

4. Jan 1, 1893

   The first fifteen Columbian values go on sale in New York and Boston; most other post offices begin on January 2.

5. Mar 1893

   Grover Cleveland returns to office; the 8-cent Columbian is added to the set.

6. May 1, 1893

   The World's Columbian Exposition opens in Chicago.

7. Aug 11, 1893

   The New York Times reports Columbian stamps being traded on the Hamburg stock exchange.

8. Oct 30, 1893

   The exposition closes after drawing some twenty-seven million visitors.

9. Apr 12, 1894

   The Columbians are withdrawn from sale; 21,844 of the 27,350 $5 stamps printed have been sold.

10. Feb 19, 1897

    A registered package mailed from Bangor, Maine, carries $49.34 in Columbians, including four $5 stamps, the largest recorded Columbian usage.

11. Jun 1899

    According to one history, the 5,506 unsold $5 stamps are destroyed by the Post Office Department.

12. Oct 24, 1991

    A New York expert committee certifies the largest reported multiple, a block of 14 without gum.

13. Aug 1993

    The committee begins certifying stamps as never hinged; by 2004 it has certified only 10 $5 Columbians that way.

14. 2008

    100 Greatest American Stamps ranks the $5 Columbus fourth.

15. Dec 2010

    A never-hinged copy graded XF-Superb 95 sells at auction for $65,000.

16. Mar 2011

    A hinged corner-margin copy graded Superb 98 sells at auction for $13,000.

The world in 1893

• Jan 17, 1893

  Queen Liliuokalani's government in Hawaii is overthrown with the intervention of U.S. Marines.

• May 5, 1893

  A crash on the New York Stock Exchange begins the Panic of 1893 and a depression.

• Jun 20, 1893

  Lizzie Borden is acquitted of the axe murders of her parents in Fall River, Massachusetts.

• Jul 1893

  Frederick Jackson Turner presents "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" in Chicago.

• Sep 11, 1893

  The World Parliament of Religions opens in Chicago alongside the fair; Swami Vivekananda receives a standing ovation.

• Sep 19, 1893

  New Zealand becomes the first country to grant women the vote.

• Sep 21, 1893

  Charles and Frank Duryea drive the first gasoline-powered motorcar in America on public roads in Springfield, Massachusetts.

• Dec 16, 1893

  Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, "From the New World," premieres at Carnegie Hall.

Price record

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, US 1893 Columbian $5 'Columbus' is number 72 of 100 in the stamps entries of the FLOAT 100. 82 of those 100 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 (37 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The Chicago Tribune joked that the $5 Columbian could be used for only one thing: mailing a 62.5-pound package of books.
• Columbus faces right on the stamp but left on the Columbian half dollar, though the same engraver, Alfred Jones, cut both portraits.
• In 1893 a corner of the Hamburg stock exchange was devoted to trading Columbian stamps.
• A group called the Society for the Suppression of Speculative Stamps was formed to protest the set.
• Every original pane included five straight-edge stamps, yet the leading expert committee has never been sent an unused straight-edge copy to certify.
• The biggest recorded use of Columbians is $49.34 in postage on a registered package from Bangor, Maine, in 1897, including four $5 stamps.
• Of the 27,350 printed, only 21,844 were sold; the rest were destroyed.