TORONTO - Jason Kelly said it was his duty as a Canadian to bring it back home.
The "it" is a card bearing what is believed to be the signature of Canada's first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald.
The card was put up for auction on eBay last week by a woman in Worcester, Mass., and the highest bidder on Tuesday night turned out to be the 31-year-old Ottawa resident.
Kelly spent a whopping $7,850 on the as yet-to-be-authenticated signature -- a price he said he thought would be higher.
"I honestly didn't think that I would actually be able to be in a position to be able to afford it,'' Kelly said. "I thought that it would end up going for a lot higher than what it did.''
But that amount suited the card's owner just fine.
Patti Kelley said she couldn't believe her eyes as the auction wound down and the price skyrocketed in the last 10 seconds by $3,000.
"I start all my auctions at 99 cents,'' Kelley told The Canadian Press from her Massachusetts home Tuesday night. "This is the biggest sale, and it's just amazing!''
She said got the card in a large lot she purchased at a private auction in Massachusetts, run by a dealer who has been in business for over 35 years.
Among the early bidders for the Macdonald signature was the Conservative Party of Canada, Macdonald's party.
"We were prepared to take a modest risk on this piece with no provenance,'' said Conservative party spokesman Ryan Sparrow.
When media reports of the card sent the bid price escalating by more than 500 per cent, the Tories stopped bidding.
It was those media reports that caught the attention of Kelly. He said he saw the story on television Monday and that's when he first became aware of the item's existence.
It's not Kelly's first autograph either. He said he owns several signatures from other Canadian prime ministers including John Diefenbaker and William Lyon Mackenzie King. However, he said the signature to be from Macdonald, who was prime minister from 1867 to 1873 and again from 1878 to 1891, will be the jewel of his collection.
"I'm a big lover of Canadian history and I'm always trying to perpetuate that in my family and in the people around me,'' Kelly said.
Jeremy Diamond, director of programs for the Dominion Institute, which is dedicated to preserving Canada's history and artifacts, said his organization is pleased to hear the card was sold to someone living in Canada.
"It'll be interesting to see as this plays out over the next little while if we can create an accurate story of the signature and what it was part of,'' Diamond said.
"Canadians knowledge seems to decline every year on who the first prime minister was of Canada, so maybe after some of the publicity around this, we kind of raise awareness for who this man was and what kind of impact he had on Canada.''
Kelly said he intends to contact the Dominion Institute to discuss how they could make the signature part of a display for everyone to enjoy -- assuming it turns out to be the real deal.
Back in Worcester, Kelley is trying to decide what to do with her new windfall. Early plans have her reinvesting some of the money by purchasing another lot of items.
"I'm gonna keep my eBay business going, 'cause I like to see items go to people that, you know, are really interested in them.''
