Market volatility affecting catalog values of PRC stamps

Jun 11, 2025, 8 AM

Stamp Market Tips by Henry Gitner and Rick Miller

The great British statesman Winston Churchill once described Russia as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” That is an apt description of the market for People’s Republic of China stamps. It’s mysterious and complicated.

Moneyed Chinese have always used stamps as a vehicle for investment, which has major impact on the market for collectors. When the Chinese economy is in flux, the stamp market reacts, sometimes with more volatility than the economy in general.

In a time of economic instability, such as China is presently experiencing, stamp catalogs, including the Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, whose values can only be updated once a year at most, have no chance of accurately reflecting the current prices. In the present state of the Chinese economy, Scott catalog values are not a reliable indication of actual market values.

For many years, we have used the 1980 8-fen Year of the Monkey New Year stamp (Scott 1586) as the bellwether for the Chinese stamp market. The Scott Standard catalog values the stamp in mint, never-hinged condition at $1,900. Recently Chinese investors have been selling their holdings of this stamp, and the current buy price is around $600.

But not all issues have declined that far. The 1963 set of 20 Butterfly stamps (Scott 661-80) with a Scott catalog value of $797.50 in unused, no gum as issued condition is still a good buy at around $600.

There are many better sets from the 1960s and 1970s that are selling anywhere from 20 percent of Scott catalog value to 80 percent of Scott catalog value. Auction realizations in China are in Chinese, which we do not read, so we check online sales to get a reading on sale prices.

A word of advice. If you have sets of Chinese stamps in unused, without gum as issued condition with hinge marks or hinge remnants that you want to sell, give them a quick soak in water to remove the marks or remnants. They will sell for more that way.

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