Value Of Chinese Stamps On Auctions

I would like to have your opinion about the value of these 3 stamps.

I don't have them; it is just for understanding the value of Chinese stamps.
All the 3 stamps were sold at the same moment (within a range of 15 min.) on auctions on ebay, by the same seller to different buyers.

The 1st one (20c) – reference given by the seller: Scott 2L73: 150$
It was sold for 600 USD
The 2nd one (5000 red) : reference given by the seller: Scott 1L133 Used: 275$
It was sold for 112 USD
The 3rd one (35000 blue): reference given by the seller: Scott 1L135 Used : 325$
It was sold for 644 USD

My questions are:
1- Concerning the high value issued from the auction for the 1st and 3rd stamps, is there something special to those stamp which make them particulars?
2- How can you explain the big difference between the 2nd and the 3rd stamp, which are from the same set? For the 2nd one, there was 17 bidders and for the 3rd one, 35 !

Thank you

May just have been a "bidding war" between a couple of people who really wanted the stamp for some reason. I've seen this elsewhere when a stamp has gone in auction for nearly twice its catalogue value when two folk get fighting over it. Sense and reason can go out of the window.

I'll leave conspiracy theories to other folk :-)

No, it's not after a war between bidder.
see the listing of the latest bidders
It seems that they wanted really to give that price for that stamp

I Think it's just the Chinese collectors are playing catch up to the rest of the collecting world. It is only in the past 15 years or so that Chinese collectors have had the means AND the access to western markets to get these stamps. I was at an auction two months ago and watched the 1976 Mao stamps go for insane prices. I mean thousands EACH. Phone bidders from China, Hong Kong and Macau got them. There were no floor bidders.

@Stuart
I don't understand their reason !
If now, they have easy acces to the foreign markets with internet, are the CHINESE stamps (old or new ones) not to be founded first in CHINA, at lower prices ?
With these fool prices, they will never have the possibility to resell them either in China or anywhere else !

@priatel
You have to remember there are over a billion chinese people, if only 1% collect stamps, you have ten million collectors. How many of them are now in the middle income group? I would guess 50%. Plus stamps can be an investment vehicle and that also increases interest and thus prices. Factor in the internet and I believe you have you answer!

I can see with prices like that I need to check my bulk purchases more carefully.

re.

" How many of them are now in the middle income group? I would guess 50%. ",

I just checked Google and in China US$ 3,000 annual income is considered middle class,

Pagoda

@pagoda
Yes "average annual income" is not an accurate stat. The annual average for the US is $51000.00 with a much higher cost of living. Plus the 1% (people with an income of $2500000.00 or more) is far higher in the US. The wealthy Chinese outnumber the wealthy US collectors. I would be very surprised if there were 10 million american collectors and if there were, the prices would be much higher. Using my same formula of 1% percent of population being stamp collectors, there are 3.5 million american stamp buyers. I plan to sell my collection in Shanghai, China when I'm ready to sell!

Before continuating the discussion with the chinese values, do you have an answer for my questions 1 & 2 ? ( see the 1st message hereabove)

Most Stamps produced by the People's Republic of China were for export to collectors in the free world, a fun and profitable way to earn cash. As with any country that prints stamps for collectors, they were never intended for postage use and were not distributed in the country at large. They (mostly) were used for propaganda for the communist regime.

If it's like that, why are the MNH stamps 10x more expensive than the used ones? It has to be the opposite !

You are asking for objective reasons to explain a market that is not currently acting rationally. It will not be possible to answer your questions with generally applicable reasons. The prices you posted are what they are. For reasons unknown, those stamps were worth that much to those bidders at that time. In another auction this month, with the market just having wiped out trillions in wealth, the results may be different.

The three specific auctions that you originally posted about had hammer prices that are not so different compared to the catalog prices to infer any generalized reason for the results. Catalog prices are just a guide but they cannot explain human behavior at any particular time.

Just sold my China collections through Kelleher & Rogers auctions in Hong Kong. Did quite well.

The first stamp is probably because of the postmark with Cyrillic alphabets instead of regular Chinese postamrks, a unique example of use.

I remember that I used to have many of these stamps in the 1990's and that the higher prices were for the ones that were not officially reprinted since it appears that the reprints had some small variations from the originals.