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The wave of Chinese money that has crashed through the markets for fine wine, art and antiques is now flooding into the altogether sleepier world of stamp collecting.
At an auction in Hong Kong this week, a rare block of four stamps from the Cultural Revolution sold for HK$8,970,000 (US$1.1m) "“ an all-time record for a Chinese stamp or multiple. Including a 15 per cent buyer's fee, the anonymous buyer paid over US$1.3m for the stamps.
The series of stamps feature a design known as the 1968 Mao's Inscription to Japanese Worker Friends (follow the link to see the four stamps)
The stamps are particularly rare because the Chinese government never issued them for fear of causing anger among the Japanese population.
The 3,000-lot Hong Kong auction has sent ripples of excitement through the stamp collecting world because it raised a total of HK$98.7m (US$12.6m), almost double the pre-sale estimate of HK$50m.
"The market has exploded "“ there's no other way to put it," said Jeffrey Schneider, founder of Interasia Auctions, the stamp specialist which handled the sale.
The extraordinary price boom in the Chinese stamp world, a small and illiquid market fuelled by die-hard collectors as well as opportunistic speculators, follows a similar pattern seen in the much bigger markets for wine and art.
"The key is [the growth of] the Chinese economy," said Schneider. He told beyondbrics:
People are looking towards collectibles. With the wealth that's been established, there's a lot of disposable income.
The power of Chinese buying hit the art and antiques worlds in December, when Christie's broke its Asian record with sales of HK$3.18bn ($409m) at its six-day Hong Kong auction. Buyers from the Chinese mainland bought as much as 43 per cent of the total.
In October, its rival Sotheby's set its own record of HK$3.09bn in its Hong Kong auction.
The Chinese are also rapidly emerging as wine aficionados. At a Sotheby's auction in Hong Kong last autumn a bidder paid £43,000 ($68,000) for a case of 2009 Château Lafite "“ nearly three times more than it would fetch in London.
China is now the largest export market for Bordeaux wines, according to Le Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux, a promotional agency, which says sales of the wine in the country have doubled every one of the past five years.
Western vintners are happy to take the new Chinese money, though some grumble that wealthy mainlanders have been known to commit the ultimate faux pas of smoking cigarettes or chewing gum at wine tasting events.
Demand for stamps may never be able to rival demand for wine or art, but Chinese appetite for the small pieces of adhesive paper shows no signs of slowing.
The All-China Philatelic Federation, the country's organisation of stamp enthusiasts, has more than 4m registered members "“ and rising.
As the Chinese search out new assets in which to invest, the small and opaque stamp market is as good a candidate as any for a speculative bubble.
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