Philately may not be a word that trips off too many tongues in Hong Kong, but there are signs that stamp collecting is catching on in this part of the world. Rare stamps can prove a decent hedge against inflation - and buyers with the right knowledge can make good profits.
Venerable stamp shop Stanley Gibbons, at 399 Strand in London, has seen the first signs of strong interest in stamp collecting in Asia over the past year or two. That has resulted in several records being broken, including the purchase of a block of four stamps from the Cultural Revolution for HK$8.97 million at an auction in Hong Kong in 2010. That is the highest-ever value for a block of Chinese stamps.
The record-setting block, bought by an unidentified collector in Hong Kong, features a design known as Mao Zedong's 1968 Inscription to Japanese Worker Friends. They were never issued, because the Japanese government, worried that the revolutionary message from Mao would cause Japanese people to riot, objected to Beijing.
In mid-December, a four-day sale held by InterAsia Auctions raised HK$62.3 million, with the sale of 3,800 lots. That made it the largest auction of mainland and Hong Kong stamps in the world in 2012. The auction that saw the sale of the Mao stamps - thought to be the only surviving set - raised HK$98.7 million in 2011.
Jeffrey Schneider, the founder and director of InterAsia Auctions, organised his first sale of stamps in Hong Kong in 1990, and in Singapore in 1993. There are two markets for Chinese stamps, he says. One group of collectors focuses on "classic stamps" from before 1949, particularly the Qing dynasty. This is a relatively stable market, he says: "It's a blue-chip area, where you have a steady customer base."
The other distinct group of collectors focuses on "new China" (post 1949) stamps, mainly from the Cultural Revolution, a time when stamp collecting was banned.
"The market for the modern things is very volatile," Schneider says. "We went through a period between 2010 and 2011 when values went up 300 per cent in 18 months. Some stamps went up 10 times - which is very dangerous."