How Many Of US Collect Expo/Fair Related Items

I love this kind of material, particularly the engraved tickets. I've got a number of obscure items I can dig out and scan, given time. For the moment here's a Pan American Expo ticket and a few postcards.

At most of the big international expositions the Bureau of Engraving and Printing brought a display and a demonstration press. They typically sold or gave away engraved souvenir cards commemorating the event. What most people aren't aware is that the most popular souvenirs at these events were silk handkerchiefs. The BEP also printed and sold these, using the same intaglio printing plates as the souvenir cards. Here's one from the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. The "Hatch Eagle" engraved by Lorenzo Hatch was a popular design and the Bureau reused it at many other fairs.

Never saw the handkerchief coming ...

Here are three souvenir cards from the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. These were part of a seven card set that the BEP sold at the fair. The Hatch Eagle and the battleship made frequent appearances at other world's fairs (the battleship was renamed to suit the event). The Capitol card was the only one trimmed to postcard size and also the only card with any text on the back to denote which expo it was issued for. I think it may have been sold individually as well as part of the set.

Ya me either, nice!

Some Expo/Fair cancels

A unique Cinderella I found in a pile of covers.







A couple of other items






Ticket to the Paris exhibition 1900





And your tour guide for the Paris exhibition






Columbian exhibition with the exhibition cancel

I like the message behind the joined hands on the 1901 card: the only thing that Central America is good for is connecting North America & South America.

I'm glad that there is no one on SCF from, say, Costa Rica, to object :)

If you check the text on that card, you'll notice that someone crafted every sentence to fit on one line. Much easier to read.

And some of those lines - "Buffalo (is) a wheelman's paradise - 223 miles asphalt pavement." - let you know what is really important in life.

Great card.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

I have a small study group of admission tickets for the Centennial Expo of 1876, and I thought some of you might be interested in looking a bit more at their varieties. These tickets were lithographed by the Philadelphia Bank Note Co., which was a successor firm owned and managed by the earlier revenue producer, Joseph R. Carpenter.

The tickets come with a bit of variety, three colors of backs and various treatments of the secondary obverse printing.



The most common tickets have a "white" or uncolored reverse.



These are the only ones which show the diagonal obverse overprint, "FIFTY CENTS" instead of the admission fee as part of the design. This overprint most commonly occurs in carmine, but is also known in black. The ticket numbers are most often in carmine or blue, but do occur in black as well.


Tickets with a pale blue-green network print on their back are not as common as their white-back cousins, and do not have an obverse overprint.



Instead their obverse design now bears the words, "FIFTY CENTS" just below the central panel with the words, "PACKAGE TICKET." Ticket numbers usually appear in carmine or blue, but a few appear to have been printed in ultramarine.


The least frequently seen variety of these are those with a reddish-pink network overprint on back, which may appear as pale or moderately deep.



The obverse design on these has the same features as the blue-green white-back type, but without a value overprint. For the "pinks" I have only seen the ticket number printed in carmine.


[Edit: I messed up the last description.]

I really like those 1876 Centennial fair package tickets. I have one in my collection, but was not aware there were so many varieties. Excellent research!

Here is another item from the Centennial Exhibition, produced by American Bank Note Co. as an advertising piece. ABNC printed this souvenir card for three separate companies (including themselves), which were distributed to fairgoers. This one was for the Dwight Company. It has portraits of all the presidents up to 1876 and state seals of all the states in the Union -- Colorado just squeaked in!

That is a most interesting card, Greg. Would you be willing to tell us its physical dimensions?

I would like to get a sense of scale for those vignettes. A couple of them are of particular interest to me.

Just measured it -- it's 9-3/4 x 8-1/2" And "card" may not be exactly correct, since it was printed on text weight paper.

Columbian exhibition unused

I picked these up at a small dealer's show in Portland ME a couple of weeks ago. looked nice and are from the APS 1930 Show in Boston. Any information would be appreciated. Any value as a 'Cinderella'?

Eligies, I think these would correctly be called "labels" though they are usually lumped into the cinderella category. They might bring a couple dollars, retail. But these are somewhat off-topic here, since they commemorate a stamp exhibition, rather than a world's fair or international exposition.

For you history buffs, here is an engraving of the mother of all world's fairs -- the 1851 International Exposition in London, staged in the Crystal Palace. After the six-month expo this structure was moved and redesigned. It stood for decades until burning to the ground in 1936.

Great topic! A bit disappointed, though, not to see anything from the 1939 NY World Fair ... which I attended as a bug-eyed boy of nine.

General Electric had a wonderful exhibit of what the future had in store. Gad! If only we could have known what wonders really were to come.

I wanted to show the US stamp issued to honor the event, and I goggled for Trylon and Perisphere ... and found this site that tells it all

https://www.bing.com/images/search?...&FORM=IQFRML