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I stumbled upon this a few days ago:

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/261010160113

Item number 261010160113



What is it about that stamp which makes it so valuable ?

This auction started as a $0.01 bid and it's gone up to over 1000 and not over yet.

The most forged modern stamp globally by far.

Most offered on ebay are fakes it is widely believed -

http://www.stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=35017

This seller from LATVIA has 30 feedbacks yet miraculously has had this stamp on covers, in mixed lots and as singles.

http://www.ebay.ca/csc/piperacke/m.html?rt=nc&LH_Complete=1&_fln=1&_ipg=25&_trksid=p3911.c0.m283

Lucky chap.

But he DOES offer "Free Postage". Hmmmm.

I had a sheet of them in my hands about a month ago. Alas it was not mine(but it was genuine).

What makes "the Monkey stamp" (call it by simply that and even most non-collectors by now know what you're talking about ) valuable? In a word: demand.

There were 5 million printed. So no shortage of supply. But its the first Chinese New Year stamp produced by the PRC. Its iconic. Everyone wants one.

Just as USA collectors aim to have a set of mint Zeppelins (that's a realistic dream--an Inverted Jenny is too pie-in-the-sky for most) or Oz collectors think a 5 shilling Bridge is a collection cornerstone and showpiece item. Neither of those are rare either. For Canada, a Bluenose, or a 3d Beaver. For GB, a Penny Black.

Is an Andy Warhol silkscreen print "worth" the $20 million+ they fetch at auction? There's any number of "prettier" pictures that straggle to get a few thousand dollars, but hang a Warhol on your wall, and you'll knock the socks off everyone. Display a techincally-brilliant still life, and people won't pay any more attention to it than they do the wallpaper.

_________________
Collecting Mongolia; Thailand; Indo-China; Mourning Covers; OHMS.
My online 'store': http://stampsfromaethelwulf.blogspot.com/

Which just proves that wealth doesn't equal class.

_________________
With kind regards, Jim

Or that there's no accounting for taste.

In the case of the Warhol works, the few who own the majority are essentially in collusion to ensure that any up for auction a) are bought by one of said party, and b) bid up amongst themselves to end on a price which is comparable to the others in the past. This ensures that their previous investments retain value, because if you want *any* Warhol, you need to outbid them.

It's evil and beautiful all at the same time.

My background is in art, and with its parallels to philately--as a collectable, an 'alternative investment', and something with aesthetic appeal--I tend to use fine art as an analogy to stamps. Not to sidetrack the thread into a discussion of art-world practices, but

The Warhol market is pretty large...Picasso is recognized as the most prolific artist, but AndyPandy is 'up there' as well...with the price that single works achieve, no one person, or even cabal of collectors/dealers could control the market I'd say. And I'd say the idea of monopolizing the market would backfire, as you'd be cornering the supply of something which sells for huge sums of money. The things that people have/have tried to corner are basic or (relatively speaking) cheaper commodities--oil (Rockefeller); diamonds (DeBeers); silver (the Hunt brothers: http://stocktaleslot.blogspot.com/2006/07/1980-silver-corner.html). I attend the sales by the big auctioneers here in HK for Chinese art & antiques, and can't imagine someone 'cornering' the market in, say, imperial ceramics. Alternative investments don't operate the way financial markets do.

Coming to stamps, well I could imagine people thinking they could speculate in some of the 'hot' items. 1970s M/S of PRC for instance. An auctioneer told me one day, when I was picking up some purchases last autumn, that things had gone way beyond the point of "do you have X or Y in your collection?" to "how many of X and Y do you have?"

I'm reminded of an anecdote the great Herman Herst mentioned in Nassau Street. A dealer acquaintance for years was buying up all the examples he could find of a certain Ceylon stamp, citing an apparent low printing quantity for that value, so that it would be the 'key' in the set. When the dealer passed away, the family asked Herst to 'clean out' the dealer's house. In a wooden chest he said he found the dealer's horde of "his pet Ceylon stamp" and "with difficulty" shifted it to a wholesaler for a pittance.

_________________
Collecting Mongolia; Thailand; Indo-China; Mourning Covers; OHMS.
My online 'store': http://stampsfromaethelwulf.blogspot.com/

The Hunt brothers story is always a good read.

I'd seen the Warhol story on a doco about the modern art bubble, but I can't find an online reference to it, so it may well have been inaccurate.

Thank you all for the informative answers. I would've thought 5 million issues wasn't much, especially for a country like China. By the way, that listing was removed by eBay.

5 million is a fairly large issue most of the time. Even a 10% mint survival rate is 500,000 examples, which should be more than enough to satisfy collectors. Occasionally the survival rate is much lower. I know of a US revenue stamp paying a tax on matches with 8 million issued, but it was issued in the 1860's when everyone used matches and it was printed on tissue paper. It catalogs $2,250 today, and is very difficult to find in decent condition. But that is the exception rather than the rule.