High-Price Postage: Set of Chinese Stamps Sells for More Than a Million Dollars

  • Share
  • Read Later
MIKE CLARKE/AFP/Getty Images

This picture taken on February 25, 2011 shows a model holding a block of four 1968 Chairman Mao stamps (est 774,000USD-1,032,000USD) with an inscription to Japanese worker friends at an auction preview in Hong Kong.

Yet another call of the China bears: beware of the stamp bubble!

One of the side effects of the staggering growth of Chinese economy is the amount of hot, disposable income from the mainland that flows into markets of all sorts of collector’s items. Mostly, unsurprisingly, of those items have a Chinese angle. From China’s own fire waters like Moutai, to modern art, antiques, old watches and cameras the collector’s craze this week hit the usually insular word of stamps.

(More on TIME.com: See the world’s most bizarre collections)

A series of stamps that feature a design known as the 1968 Mao’s Inscriptions to Japanese Worker Friends fetched HKD 8.970.000 ($1.1 million). They are so highly valued because they were never released, for fear of infuriating the Japanese government back then. The whole lot, 3000 items, grossed at $12.6 million .

“The market has exploded – there’s no other way to put it,” an evidently happy Jeffrey Schneider, founder of Interasia Auctions, the house that handled the sale, told the Financial Times.

(More on TIME.com: See the world’s first “intelligent” postage stamp)

NewsFeed has decided to engage in the subtle art of fear mongering and future divination: where would the next China bubble happen? Sell your dolls, tin toys and Madonna’s LPs.