China: Why Are Some Stamps That Are Not Rare So Hard To Find?

Look at any random PR of China-collection and you will discover some stamps with a big circulation are hard to find.


At last, an empty space filled( C65)...

Take for instance C65 from 1959, Sino-Czechoslovak Technical Cooperation on Posts and Communication (Let's just call it Sino-Czecho ''). It had a circulation of some 7 million, and that's rather a lot for this period. It's worth only 6 dollar mint, 2 dollar used. Easy to find, you would say. Not at all. Took me a long time to encounter it and snap it up.



The Betune-set (C84), not al all common.

And C84, Dr. Norman Bethune, with a circulation of 5.4 million. The set is worth some 12 dollar mint and 6 used. Easy to find, you would say. Not at all. While many other set, like C56 Inauguration of Beijing Telegraph Building, with a similar circulation of 4.5 million, can be found in many, many collections.


One stamp of the C56-set: Not a very large circulation, but can be found easily.

Some stamps may have survived the ravages of times, and there were a lot in China, while others perished. But why? There must be reasons behind it. And when talking about value, there often seems to be no real connection between the actual number of stamps still in collections and the value. Sino-Czecho, C65, should have a much higher value, for instance.


My Zunyi-Mao's. The whole set comprises 3 stamps. If I ever part with them, it will be with pain.

But it's off course also the topic that defines value, especially with Chinese stamps. Thus C74, 25th Anniversary of Zunyi Meeting, is now valued at some 200 dollar mint. Its circulation does not warrant that: 3 million. And I have seen it more than that C65 Sino-Czecho-stamp. It took not that much time for me to harvest 3 used and even 1 mint stamp from that set of 3 from large haphazard collections. It must be the Mao-theme that inflated its catalogue value, not its rarity.

There have been a number of threads on the forum regarding this topic. I collected Russia and some common stamps from the 1950s were really tough to find. Not sure why. One guess is that although the published printed quantities are high the number of stamps that actually made it into the wild were a fraction of what was printed. Not sure what other reasons could be but am interested in hearing guesses.

PS: IMO the catalogs are not good at valuing these items since the supply is so low and when these stamps do show up on ebay for instance people pay more than catalog to fill those spaces.

Rogdcam: Indeed, these kind of stamps are sold for higher prices than their catalogue value, like the Bethune-set. Do not really understand why catalogue values of these kind of stamps are not changed.

Not to denounce the catalog people (too badly) because they do have to deal with hundreds of thousands of stamp values, but . . . the problem may lie in their methods, and it may be inevitable.

The have to get their catalogue values from somewhere, and as I understand it, they use a mixture of dealers, auction houses, and whatever else to determine how much a stamp is worth. With higher-priced stamps that collectors don't see often and of which there are relatively few, that might be pretty easy. They would kind of average all the prices those stamps were reported to have been auctioned for -- or something like that. But what about more common stamps? How can they realistically know the values of those stamps? Probably they can't so they simply go by reported issue quantities. If those quantities are even accurate -- or if they even got sold to customers -- and if those stamp buyers even bothered to use them to mail a letter -- and so on.

One way cataloguers choose a value is to assign a minimum value to pretty much all stamps in the catalogue -- say 35c but no lower than that no matter how common they are, even if a billion of them were issued. This is at least partly so dealers can make a profit. Assigning too low a value would make it much harder to make any profit, and we all, including catalogue makers, depend on the dealers to feed our habit so we have to make sure they can make a profit.

But how do they figure out what stamps are worth beyond that minimum value arbitrarily assigned? I have no idea. How do they decide some are worth $1 and others $10 and even others $50? But that system, whatever it is, certainly might have more than a few flaws, and apparently it does.

Stamps you almost literally "cannot find, but which appear to be common stamps of little value drive me nuts and must be worth more than their catalogue value. There are stories of collectors searching for years, maybe decades, for some measly little ordinary-looking stamp that has a catalogue value of maybe 50c or a dollar and only after endless searching, finding one dirty, ripped copy in some Egyptian bazaar on a random envelope inside a book of recipes -- or some such thing. "I found one copy in a Turkish book store I had wandered into during a sudden rainstorm." Sounds like the premise to a mystery movie, doesn't it? And the question is why isn't that apparently rare stamps worth a lot more than its catalogue value? I have no idea. Maybe the production figures that were provided are inaccurate? Maybe no one liked the stamp so no one bought it? Maybe maybe maybe.

I think maybe some "investor" bought them all up and is hoarding them, and the Scott catalogue people know this so they're keeping the price low just to thwart him. Waddya think of that idea? I love crazy conspiracy theories so I'm going with this one.

DrewM: The reasons behind the discrepancy between catalogue value and actual rarity are more mundane I think. With issues that are rarely traded, they probably just make an educated or uneducated guess about their catalogue value. Traders DO know how common or rare some supposedly common stamps really are, and price them accordingly. That's why these stamps sell for more than their catalogue value: they know they are hard to find and are sought after by desperate collectors. And some other thought: Some stamps may indeed have been circulated in large quantities, but were never sold widely and for the most part destroyed by postal authorities. When they were not destroyed, you now encounter of a given issue a lot of mint stamps and almost never a used one. The used one should carry a much higher catalogue value, but many times that's not the case. Take for instance S51, Support Heroic Cuba. The 22 fen-stamp is used very rare indeed, but sells for far less than the mint one (30 vs. 80 dollar).