True Value Of China's Year Of Monkey Stamp.

Well, it has finally happened. My wife works regularly in Beijing and was today gifted with a block of the Gengshen Monkey stamp. I likely won't have decent pics until she gets home but it is the infamous 8-fen red.

I am hoping that someone here can direct me to a good resource for identifying the fakes because if real, customs and her Conflict-of-Interest declarations get interesting if the market values are legitimate.

Hi,
Have you seen this link?
http://www.ebay.com/gds/beware-of-f...52645/g.html
Don

I halfway expected you to be pointing-out that his wife had already listed the stamps on ebay.

"Motivated seller! Must sell before husband sees them!"

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Or perhaps a discreet Craig's List ad for a swap: Willing to exchange Gengshen Monkey stamp block for Birkin bag (retail around $15,000 )

Both items, in Beijing slang... "similar to real"

Don - Yes, the first hit on a googling expedition is usually a good place to start. I look at ebay resources much like wikipedia... fraught with unreliable information. I was hoping someone knew of an 1847-like site or something. With an official run of some 5B stamps and having been told the PRC is still printing them, the value does not seem supportable.

The print run was 5 million, which is actually near the high end of print quantities for T-series stamps of 1980. May I ask where you heard that PRC was still printing them? Perhaps the information source was confused by reproductions that are produced for the tourist trade?

The vertical waves mentioned in the link is only for one of the numerous known forgeries. Some of the forgeries are quite good, and the number of forgeries being sold online is not insignificant. The fine textured sheen on the monkey's fur is a must for genuine stamps. When you shine a light on it, you can't miss it. That's what you check first, as it is impossible to reproduce accurately using consumer-grade printing equipment.

One appeared earlier this month in one of the auctions that I usually bid in

http://www.warwickandwarwick.com/au...hived/123187

Estimate £500, sold for £925.

As with much of the modern world, I don't get it. In fact, I'd rather have Jenny's bag ...

5B... 5M... close enough on my iPad to blame a combination of ageing eyes and decrepit thumb-tying!

khj - Thank you for your advise on inspecting this issue for authenticity.

As for the source of the "still printing" comment, it is from someone aware of the real stamps, the forgeries and the reproductions, as well as how and why PRC culture keeps the market value of this issue artificially high. The person informed me that the offial run was understated by half again and that the gov't printed more in 1996 and possibly again in 2005. True or false? I have no way of knowing.

I am an advanced collector of China stamps. I should be able to tell if it is genuine or not, if you have high resolution scan.

NO. China government is not re-printing the Year of Monkey stamps. Most of the high quality forgeries are from Taiwan, which are actually using the expensive engraved printing technology. The difference is in some details and the printing paper.

May I ask the source of this information? All I've ever heard was that the high quality forgeries were from Hong Kong (again, no reference for this information either). This is the first time I've heard they were coming from Taiwan.

None of the sources are confirmed. Really, nobody claims the responsibility of the forgeries. But I don't think it matters. The most recent high quality forgeries that I am aware of came out about a few years ago. These stamps were not printed in full sheets as the original ones. Some of these forgeries have the imprints, but the imprints are always on the left side. Most of the other forgeries are easy to tell since they were not engraved printings.

One genuine Year of Monkey stamp is valued at about $1500-1700USD. You will need to add some premium for blocks or those with imprints.

A $7,000-$8,000 gift. Pretty nice.