Wealth Management by Edward Zuckerman

PART ONE

PHILATELISTS
Lot 74 opened at two hundred Swiss francs, a screen
displaying the equivalents in dollars, euros, pounds
sterling, and yuan, these beneath a giant blown-up photo of
the lot. Which was a postage stamp, an old postage stamp,
just like the seventy-three lots that had preceded it and the
212 that were to follow. This one, dated 1893, was from the
Niger Coast Protectorate and bore a picture of Queen
Victoria, looking solemn and remote and wearing white
lacy headgear that looked sort of bridal, although Rafe was
sure that wasn’t the intention, that it was more likely some
sort of crown equivalent. Rafe wondered what indigenous
residents of the Niger Coast Protectorate in 1893 would
have made of that image, of the old white woman (their
queen? their empress?) who was “protecting” them from
what, France? Assuming the locals had ever seen these
stamps of their British overlords. Did they ever make their
way from villages and fields to a post office? (Were there
post offices on the Niger Coast, wherever that was, exactly,
in 1893?) To whom would they mail a letter?
Rafe’s mind returned to the twenty-first century, the one
he lived in, which was odd enough. He looked around the
room again—a grand reception hall in a hotel on the Quai

Wealth Management by Edward Zuckerman