China Is World Center of Speculation: Forget Stocks, Buy Stamps

Why buy stocks that go up 80% in eight months when you can buy stamps that go up 10,000%? Chinese collectors and speculators have combined to create a new frenzy: collectible speculation. Exchanges are seeing booming business and prices are going up more in one month than the stock market goes up in years. The boom is total: several major exchanges have opened in the past couple of years, trading volume has surged and prices have soared.

Some background from September 2014: China launches first online stamp, coin, card exchange center

China's very first online exchange platform for stamps, coins, and cards opened on Sept. 5 in Shanghai and is expected to prompt the circulation of about US$97.8 billion of the country's social wealth, reports our Chinese language sister newspaper China Times.

The Shanghai Stamp, Coin, and Magnetic Card Exchange Center, co-established by the state-owned China Post Group, China Finance Corporation and Shanghai's Zhenyin Investment and located at the General Post Office Building in Shanghai, provides a platform for collectors to trade, circulate, invest in, appraise, store, and apply for loans with the commodities.

The online services allow more efficient treasure exchange at a cheaper trading cost than traditional means. The online trading is potentially to outgrow the offline in scale, and may soon dominate the market and standardize the pricing mechanism, said experts in the business.

As with everything else in China, eventually very large number of people show up. In the case of the collectible exchange, it didn't take long at all.

Exchanges have sprung up across the nation, but the most speculative is the Nanjing Culture Exchange. On March 17, the exchange traded 115 different classes of items, worth a combined ￥13.9 billion, at 2 to 3 times the list price. The most popular items are stamp cards, stamps, and gold and silver coins. It was on this exchange that a stamp card increased in value 100.65 times.

As of March 9, 2015, Nanjing Culture Exchange launched a total of eight indices, besides the Composite Index, there is the coins index, stamp index, phone cards index, postage Fengpian index, banknotes index, gold and silver index. The total number of listed holding has reached 115 kinds.

October 21, 2013, Nanjing Bika Culture Exchange Composite Index opened 130 points after the consolidation of nearly 200 points in the vicinity of 10 months.

The index has been exploding higher:

July 2014, the market did not "Meteors", but when the market was officially launched Bika electronic trading, the highest point of the month for 247.8 points, followed by the way the attack, detonated a second round of bull: September highest point reached 782.64 points . However, in September 2014 it has experienced volatility since the market first: the highest and lowest points difference of 316.56 points, amplitude amazing, but with the end of a strong upside, the month rose still reached 14.11%. September's shock spread to the entire fourth quarter, although once stood on the 900-point mark but can not stabilize.

January of this year, the long-Charge index soared 704.7 points, broke through thousands of points mark, the month or up to 80.78%. Continue to rise in February, topped 2,000 points mark, and its highest point since listing 2137.44 points.

Here's a chart of this index:

Check out these stamps:

Here's a chart of the exchange price:

If coins are your thing, check out the Nanfang Culture Exchange where 90% of goods are commemorative coins, gold and silver coins, etc. It has a ￥3 billion market cap selling at 1.22 times the list price.

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