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 du Mont-Blanc, blond wood walls and crystal chandeliers. Probably the site of many weddings, elegant Swiss marrying elegant Swiss. Today the room was filled with folding chairs mostly occupied by men whose own weddings were far in the past, if they were married, and, if they weren’t, well at least they had their stamp collections to keep them company. Rafe guessed he was the youngest person in the room by forty years. He wondered if he would take up stamp collecting when he was seventy. He didn’t think so.

The Niger Coast stamp sold for three hundred Swiss francs and Rafe didn’t care. Neither, apparently, did the overweight man with the ambitious combover sitting three rows in front of Rafe, who had a good view of the man at an oblique angle, which he’d accomplished by some minor chair shuffling. The man had not raised his paddle to bid. He had bid so far on just three lots—an old Chinese stamp picturing a writhing dragon, a ragged specimen from British Guiana that looked like it would shred if you breathed on it, and a scorched stamped envelope that had been on the Hindenburg when it exploded. The only thing these lots had in common was their prices. High. In his copy of the glossy illustrated auction catalogue, Rafe circled every lot the man had won and noted his winning bids—18,000 Swiss francs, 68,000, 22,000.