My wife and I are both time travelers.

Chapter 76 Stamp Collection
After the comic opera performance, the Suzhou storytelling and ballad singing will follow.

A man and a woman came on stage carrying a pipa and a sanxian, and began to sing and perform Pingtan in Suzhou dialect to the music.

Lin Ying listened with great interest for a while until the song ended, when she clapped and cheered like everyone else. Only then did she realize that she had been standing there for almost half an hour without realizing it.

Leaving the tea room, Lin Ying and Lao Wen continued walking along the corridor, and soon arrived near the back gate of the West Palace.

Although the location is a bit out of the way, there are still quite a few people here.

Compared to other parts of the West Palace, there were fewer young people here, and more middle-aged people in their thirties and fourties. These people were either carrying bags or holding several thick booklets. They were standing or sitting, chatting with each other, and reading the booklets with great interest.

"What's this for?" Lin Ying asked Lao Wen curiously from afar.

"Let me see!"

Old Wen craned his neck and looked over there twice before understanding: "This should be the place where stamps are exchanged."

"Stamp collecting?"

Lin Ying had heard of this term before, but wasn't familiar with it. After all, stamp collecting had fallen out of favor in her time, and fewer and fewer people were collecting stamps. In addition, the number of stamps issued was increasing. Once this market, which resembled a collection, shrank and lost demand, it inevitably declined.

But Lin Ying had also heard that stamps were once very popular in the market from the 1980s to the early 2000s, which was nearly 30 years. A small stamp often had a value far exceeding its price and became the pursuit of countless people.

Oh, and there's also the famous first-generation zodiac stamps, among which the monkey stamp once fetched a record price of 12000 yuan per stamp in 2011.

Keep in mind that its face value was only eight cents! In just 31 years, it increased 150,000 times, which is simply outrageous.

Unfortunately, the peak price in 2011 can be considered the last glory of the stamp market. After that, the stamp market began to decline, and as stamp prices continued to fall, fewer and fewer people collected them.

Suddenly, Lin Ying remembered something: wasn't this year 1980, the Year of the Monkey? So, this year was the year the first generation of Chinese zodiac stamps, the Monkey stamp, was issued?
Intrigued, Lin Ying walked over and saw two men looking through a stamp album, their heads close together as they talked. She stood aside, pretending to be a passerby, and looked in another direction, but she listened intently.

"Your Yangtze River Bridge photo is in pretty good condition. What are your plans for exchanging it for?"

The middle-aged man wearing glasses held stamp tweezers and took out a set of stamps from the other person's stamp album. He examined them carefully for a long time, looking not only at the front but also at the serrations on the sides and even flipping them over to examine the adhesive on the back. After confirming that there were no problems, he looked up and asked the other person.

The other man was slightly younger, and looked to be about the same age as Lao Wen. He pointed to the stamp album in the middle-aged man's hand and said, "I want to trade you your set of 'The Red Lantern'!"

"Change my Red Lantern story?"

The middle-aged man subconsciously pushed up his glasses and couldn't help but laugh: "Brother! You're not kidding me, are you? You think you can trade my 'Red Lantern' for a set of Yangtze River Bridges? Are you kidding me?"

The young man blushed slightly. He knew that the two sets of stamps were not of equal collectible value, so he quickly pointed to a block of four in his stamp album and said, "I'll add this block of four as well, is that alright?"

The middle-aged man looked closely and was even more dumbfounded. The other party's four-stamp set was a newly released zodiac monkey stamp. What did he want with this?
Monkey stamps are worthless now. They're available at post offices now, and you can get as many as you want. Each stamp is only worth eight cents. Forget about a block of four, even if you add two more blocks of four, how much would they be worth?

"Brother, you should keep it for yourself." The middle-aged man waved his hand, shoved the other man's stamp album into the young man's hand, and turned to leave.

The young man immediately became anxious. He had long coveted the set of "The Red Lantern" stamps and had been searching for them for several days. If the other party left like this, he didn't know when he would be able to find such good quality stamps again.

"Wait, brother, let's discuss this some more, let's discuss it some more!" the young man pleaded desperately.

“Brother, it’s not that I don’t want to trade with you, it’s just that there’s no room for negotiation! You want to trade my Red Lantern set with your Yangtze River Bridge set and this Monkey Four-Way Link set? Are you kidding me? Go ask around all over Shanghai, my Red Lantern set is a rare find, especially one in good condition. This trade is simply not going to work. Why don’t you ask someone else? I absolutely refuse.”

"Let's discuss it again! Let's discuss it again!"

The young man smiled and said, but seeing the middle-aged man shaking his head, he thought for a moment, gritted his teeth, leaned close to the man's ear, and whispered something. The middle-aged man, who was originally planning to leave, was stunned by his words and stopped in his tracks, looking at the young man with suspicion.

"Brother, what you just said is true?"

"Of course it's true!" "You're not kidding?"

"I'm absolutely not joking!"

The middle-aged man hesitated for a moment, then nodded: "That would be fine, but I need to see the money first."

"No problem, but this..."

The young man looked around, and the middle-aged man gave him a wink. The young man understood and followed the middle-aged man to a corner. The two whispered a few words in the corner, and when no one was paying attention, the young man took out some money from his pocket, counted out a few bills, and then stuffed them directly into the middle-aged man's hand.

After taking the money and confirming that the amount was correct, the middle-aged man took out the set of Yangtze River Bridge and the block of four monkey stamps from the young man's stamp album, and then took out the set of Red Lantern from his own stamp album. The two exchanged the stamps on the spot.

Having finally obtained the red light stamp he had been longing for, the young man beamed with joy. He carefully inserted the stamp into the empty space in his stamp album, looked at it with satisfaction, then closed the album and left with light steps.

Lin Ying, who was not far away, saw everything and listened carefully to the conversation. When the young man left happily and the middle-aged man looked smug, Lin Ying looked thoughtful.

"Let's go, shall we go ahead and take another look?" Old Wen said to Lin Ying from the side.

"I've seen enough, so I'd like to wander around here for a bit."

"What? You're also planning to collect stamps?" Old Wen asked with a smile when he saw that Lin Ying seemed interested in stamps.

Lin Ying smiled and nodded: "These things seem quite interesting. They're colorful and pretty. I've never touched them before. I didn't realize so many people play with stamps."

"Hehe, there are actually quite a few people in Shanghai who collect stamps. Almost every cultural center in the city has a place like that, but the biggest stamp markets are here at Xigong and at Mushroom Pavilion." Although Lao Wen didn't understand stamps, he knew quite a bit. Seeing that Lin Ying was interested in stamps, he told her some information about the stamp markets in Shanghai.

"Mushroom Pavilion?" Lin Ying asked curiously, "What kind of place is that? Why does it have such a strange name?"

"Hahaha!" Old Wen laughed, "This place isn't far from where you live. Just walk two streets south from your current neighborhood, and you'll find it. Do you remember the park in the middle of Zhaojiabang Road to the south?"

Seeing Lin Ying nod, Lao Wen continued, "The Mushroom Pavilion is over there. There are several large mushroom-shaped stone pavilions in the street garden near the intersection past your house. Everyone calls this garden the Mushroom Pavilion. Every afternoon, many stamp collectors gather there, and there are even more people on weekends. Over time, it has spontaneously formed a folk stamp exchange market."

Lin Ying immediately remembered that this was near the bus stop where she and Zhou Jiye had taken the bus to the suburbs to collect eggs.
No wonder she and Zhou Jiye saw a lot of people in the park when they were on the bus. At that time, Lin Ying didn't know that it was a stamp market. She thought it was just a gathering of ordinary people, like the old men who usually play chess or cards on the roadside with their small stools.

Suddenly realizing what was happening, Lin Ying secretly made a note of the place, planning to visit it sometime in the future.

She then spent the rest of the time strolling around the area with great interest, listening attentively to the conversations of stamp enthusiasts who had come to exchange stamps.

Although Lin Ying knew nothing about stamp collecting and had never participated in such a hobby before, she gradually learned some knowledge about stamp collecting during the hour or so she spent there. Through conversations with others and her occasional, shameless questions, she managed to learn a little.

In the stamp market, most stamp collectors come here to exchange ideas, showcase their collections, or exchange stamps with other enthusiasts to enrich their collections.

Of course, there are also people like the middle-aged and young people mentioned earlier. When they see good stamps that they don't own but need, they will offer to exchange them with their own collection. The exchange is basically a stamp for stamp. However, given that the collection value of some stamps is different, the two parties will propose to exchange one for many or many for one. If there are no suitable stamps to exchange, some people who are not short of money will, like the young people mentioned earlier, quietly offer to make up the difference with money, or simply spend money to buy the other party's stamps to achieve their goal.

Although it is not encouraged to directly estimate the value of stamps in monetary terms or even to trade them for money, the demand for stamps does exist, although simple stamp-for-stamp exchanges are more common.

This situation signifies that the stamp collecting market is gradually evolving from an initial hobby into a burgeoning market. From an economic perspective, this aligns with the principle that supply and demand create a market, and it is precisely for this reason that it will gradually evolve into the booming stamp collecting market of the future, ultimately becoming an industry.

When leaving, Lin Ying specifically asked Lao Wen where the nearest post office was. Lao Wen thought it was just a girl's curiosity and pointed to the direction of the West Palace gate, saying that there was a post office not far from here. He even jokingly asked Lin Ying if she had really become interested in stamp collecting.
Lin Ying's answer surprised Lao Wen. She actually smiled and nodded, admitting that she was indeed interested in stamps and planned to go to the post office to take a look.

After leaving the West Palace, Lin Ying went to the post office that Lao Wen had mentioned. When she arrived, she found that the post office did indeed have a special counter for stamp collecting.

I ran over and saw several stamp albums and tweezers and other stamp collecting tools on the counter, as well as some stamps with a little collectible value for sale.

After asking at the counter, Lin Ying immediately took out her money and bought two stamp albums, and then bought several sets of stamps from previous years. Of course, the price of these stamps was definitely not the face value, because they had collectible value and were purchased at a separate price from the counter. These stamps had all increased in value by more than 30%, with the highest almost doubling in value.

In addition, Lin Ying also bought three blocks of four of the newly released Year of the Monkey stamps directly from the post office and happily put them into her stamp album. Seeing her doing this, Lao Wen next to her was completely confused and wondered if Lin Ying was really planning to start a stamp collecting business.
(End of this chapter)