Guan Fuyuan, in his sixties, walked to his bank in the bitter Beijing wind just after breakfast to wait for three hours. Just before lunchtime, he got what he came for .
Every year since 2003 in the run up to Lunar New Year, China has issued a commemorative coin featuring the horoscope animal for the coming year. Last year, the Year of the Sheep, was the beginning of the second 12-year cycle, and the face value of the coin was raised from one yuan (15 U.S. cents) to 10 yuan.
The central bank opened online subscription for the monkey coins earlier this month and on Saturday began to distribute them. Any Chinese citizen could apply for up to five coins, to be collected and paid for before New Year. For some, it is a small investment; for others just some fun.
This years coin resembles a one euro, basically silver with a gold-colored rim, featuring an image of a traditional paper-cut of a monkey sitting beside a lantern, staring off into the distance.
Born in 1980, another the Year of Monkey, Guan's daughter Yijun decided to buy one this year. Subscriptions opened at midnight on Jan. 6 and she began clicking as soon as the clock struck twelve. She eventually succeeded at around 6 a.m.
"It took a long time to place my order, perhaps due to a bad web connection, perhaps because there were so many other people doing the same thing at the same time," she recalled.
Previously, Yijun had worked in England for three years. "In Great Britain, they issue commemorative coins on many occasions, such as the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth and to celebrate 150 years of the world's oldest subway system. I collected as many as I could." The monkey coin is the first Chinese addition to her collection.
Beijing's allocation of coins was sold out in less than 12 hours online and a report in The Beijing Evening News said that more than three million coins were snapped up in the first hour.
At a downtown branch of ICBC (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China), Yang Fan used three ID cards to collect 15 coins. He told Xinhua that his coins were mostly gifts for friends and relatives. "They are very special Spring Festival gifts," he said. "It is not any kind of investment or speculation, as it takes a long time for them to appreciate."
Jia Lijun, an ICBC teller, said that about 500 customers were coming in each day to collect their coins. A notice on the front door read that the branch had been allocated 22,000 of the minted monkeys.
According to ICBC, sheep coins issued in 2003 have risen from a face value of one yuan to 310 yuan in today's market. Last year's 10 yuan sheep now change hands for around 100 yuan. Wang Fubin, president of a Nanjing investors association, said that the price of this year's monkey had already doubled.
"Zeal for collecting coins has surged, and these horoscope coins are affordable for many people," Wang said, "although coins remain less popular than stamps as investments."
The value of collectibles largely depends on scarcity and age. Liu Haoxiang, a professional investor, told Xinhua that the monkey stamp issued in 1980 is now worth more than 100,000 times its face value.
Wang Yu, a collector for 15 years, noted that coins and stamps were more accessible to ordinary people than jewelry and paintings, with lower risk of forgery. "They are issued by state-owned institutions so that their authenticity is more reliable," he said.
But for Guan, while his wait in the freezing depths of Beijing's winter for a brass monkey was not entirely in vain, his time was not as well spent as it might have been. "I waited for so long but my daughter had only reserved one!" he complained.
Yijun confessed that her motivation to buy one of the coins was more fun than investment. "I like to keep some small souvenirs of each stage of my life, so that when I am in my declining years, these things will take me back to the old days," she said.
