From the year of 1980, China began a series of postage stamp releases to mark the Chinese Zodiac at Chinese New Year starting with the celebrated Golden Monkey.

The stamp is remarkable in stamp trading terms in that a full five million copies were printed, ensuring that it is in no danger of becoming rare any time soon, and yet well-kept copies and especially multiples can be highly valuable.

The stamps were originally printed in sheets of 80, and it is these which have proved extremely popular with the strong supply being met by extremely powerful investment demand.

Indeed, complete sheets of the Golden Monkey were already clambering past the HK$500,000 (US$) mark in January 2010 with Philip Weiss and Spink holding auctions selling sheets for HK$522,472 and HK$585,600 or its equivalent respectively.

Chinese Year of the Monkey stamp sheet

In August 2010, Interasia bagged a world record price sale of HK$1,265,000 in Hong Kong. Was this a fluke? Certainly not - in fact the price was not only matched but surpassed in the past year.

In January 2011, there was a sale at Suzhou, China, which saw a sheet sold for the equivalent of HK$1.4m. Then in August 2011 Zurich Asia took the world record with a HK$1,440,000 sale.

Finally, at the end of September 2011, Interasia wrested the record back with a sheet sold at HK$1,495,000, an increase of 186% in a little over 18 months, a remarkable investment return during this economic recession.

Are there no heights which this nimble primate will not climb? Check our stamp section regularly for more news on this remarkable stamp.