An auction house in Hong Kong recently sold a rare Chinese stamp, known as the “Small One Dollar” for nearly £300,000 ($US 411, 960). It dates back to 1897 and is one of 32-recorded copies in existence.
Only a minute number of the “king of stamps” were ever made because the Chinese Post Office printed the stamps with a typeface that was too small to read.
There have been several Chinese and Asian stamp sales over the course of the last month as wealthy speculators gamble on China’s rising world influence, wealth and power.
“There’s been a huge amount of speculation going on in the last year and a half in some of the more modern People’s Republic stamps that were printed after 1949… Prices of old stamps are rising at perhaps 15 per cent a year, but the modern issues are growing at more than 100 per cent as clients speculate that values will continue to rise,” said Louis Mangin, the auction’s director.
Other stamps, some not even that rare, were sold at this three-day auction that fetched amazing prices as well. For example, a complete sheet of Red Monkey stamps dating from 1980, with some five million in circulation fetched £83,000.
Many foreign buyers number among the buyers of these stamps as they seek to imitate the wealth already gleaned from Chinese mainland collectors.
The prices gleaned for some of these stamps in just the last two years alone have been extraordinary. A sheet of 1964 souvenir stamps issued to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China fetched £765 in December of 2008 and sold for £3,330 at an auction in August of this year.
Stamps are the new stocks in a dynamic market.
Source: http://www.weirdasianews.com/2010/10/02/chinese-king-stamps-sells-300000/
No comments:
Post a Comment