A rare Chinese stamp from 1897 has fetched nearly HK$3.5m (£300,000) at auction in Hong Kong.
The "Small One Dollar" stamp, one of 32 recorded copies in existence and described as "the king of stamps" in China, was the result of an error by the Chinese Post Office who printed the stamps with a typeface that was too small to read, meaning only a tiny number were ever made.
The sale came during a three-day auction in Hong Kong that ended on Monday having raised more than £2m, the latest in a series of record Chinese and Asian stamp sales this year that have seen prices of some stamps quadrupling in the last 18 months.
The most spectacular price jumps have come in modern Chinese stamps as speculators and investors bet that China's rising wealth will continue to drive prices ever higher.
"There's been a huge amount of speculation going on in the last year and a half in some of the more modern People's Republic stamps that were printed after 1949," said Louis Mangin the director Zurich Asia which conducted last weekend's auctions.
Among the highest prices was the HK$1m (£83,000) paid for a complete sheet of Red Monkey stamps dating from 1980 which are not even rare, with some five million in circulation.
However, they are highly sought after as they feature an auspicious year of the Chinese zodiac on an equally auspicious red background – a colour which equates to wealth in China.
"Prices of old stamps are rising at perhaps 15 per cent a year, but the modern issues are growing at more than 100 per cent as clients speculate that values will continue to rise," Mr Mangin said.
He added that the foreign buyers were among the speculators rushing to cash in on the new found wealth of Chinese mainland collectors.
"Like all speculative investments, international clients are coming in to benefit from the market. The biggest buyer this weekend was a London investor who bought more than HK$2m (£165,000). It's not just mainland Chinese." Other auctions houses confirmed the trend, with Rob Schneider, a principal with the Interasia Auctions describing price rises over the last two years as "pretty astronomical".
For example a sheet of souvenir stamps from 1964, released to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China that fetched HK$9,200 (£765) in December 2008 made more than $HK40,000 (£3,330) at auction last month.
"What is interesting is that the boom in Chinese stamps is flowing back into the West as collectors want to be a part of the boom," he added, "It's a bit like the stock market, people want to get into it."