Full sheets in excellent condition of one of the most famous and popular Chinese stamp issues of all time should make big money at a Hong Kong sale this month.
The Spink sale in Hong Kong on May 30 has over 1,000 lots, including many well-known rarities from early Chinese philatelly: large dragons, small dragons, red revenues…
But the stars of the sale are a relatively recent issue that was issued in huge numbers and can still be found in quite large numbers.
A full sheet of these much-collected stamps is a real gem. Image courtesy of Spink.
With an estimate of HK$750,000 to HK$780,000 (around £72,000 to £75,000) a sheet of 1980 Year of the Monkey stamps is expected to be the most valuable item in the sale.
The sheet is described as “unmounted mint”, “showing some of the offsets on the reverse”. There are 80 stamps in 10 lines of eight stamps.
That eight has been important to the success of this landmark stamp.
It was issued in 1980 with a design by Huang Yongyu and Shao Bolin to celebrate the Year of the Monkey in the Chinese horoscope.
This letter to Nagasaki is one of the earliest items in modern Chinese postal history with a stamp from Shanghai that was produced locally. Image courtesy of Spink.
The charming image was printed on a red background, considered lucky in Chinese culture. And it carried a face value of 8 fen, a lucky number in China.
These made the stamp an instant collector’s favourite. So despite its 5 million copies, it quickly became sought-after and valuable.
Full sheets are rare and valuable in philatelly. Two 2011 sales of full sheets of Year of the Monkey stamps made £117,200 and £122,700 respectively.
The Spink sale includes three full sheets of the stamp with estimates starting HK$450,000 (round £43,000).
The next most valuable item in the sale is a famous rarity: a full letter from 1867 with the earliest use of a Shanghai local post stamp. It carries a high estimate of HK$250,000, around £24,000.
