As the year of Rabbit is approaching, newly released stamps with a rabbit pattern have become a hot product in the stamp market, attracting numerous collectors.

Let's take a closer look with reporter Liu Min.

It is minus 3 degree Celsius outside, but it hasn't affected the enthusiasm of stamp collectors. Some have been waiting outside post offices since 4 a.m. for the first-day released stamps of the upcoming Rabbit year. Xiao Yu, a graduate student is one of them.

"I've been waiting here since 4:30am. I was born in a rabbit year, and I heard that this year's edition of the rabbit stamps is well designed, so I'm willing to suffer from the freezing wind to buy the stamps."

The whole collection of rabbit stamps with related souvenir products is priced at 5,000 yuan. A four-stamp edition is only 8.5 yuan. The post office invited the stamp's designer, Ma He, to celebrate the occasion.

"I tried to come out with a lovely rabbit and I used Paper-cutting patterns as the background. Look, she is sending best wishes to everyone."

Within two hours, some regular collections have been sold out. Many buyers say they believe the zodiac stamp collection will definitely increase in value.

"I bought a stamp in 1985 at 6.4 yuan, the ox year. But now it jumped to 800 yuan each."

"I've been collecting horoscope sign stamps since 1980 when the monkey stamp first came out. Now I've got a complete collection."

Market insider, Zhang Jinyu, is from Beijing Stamp Company. He's been working in this area for more than 20 years. He gives an example to forecast the rapid value increase on stamp investments.

"China released its first zodiac stamp in 1980, the monkey stamp. The stamp was only 8 cents, but now each one increased up to 11 thousand yuan. You can tell how much value stamps can appreciate as time passes."

Besides rabbit stamps, those with dragon pattern released in the year of 1988 jumped to 2,000 yuan each. The rabbit stamps released for the first time has jumped up to 380 yuan, the second round edition is 300 yuan. The high profit enlightened the stamp market, attracting many outsiders to speculate. Would this year's stamp see a prosperous future in value increase? Zhang Jinyu is quite positive.

"When the next edition of rabbit stamps gets launched, and that's 12 years later, today's rabbit stamp will rise by four to five times in value."

The China Post is getting a jump on the coming Year of the Rabbit by creating stamps made of jade. Using images on the zodiac stamps in 1987 and 1999, the previous two Years of the Rabbit, the jade stamps are carved on Hetian jade, a special product of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. This is the first time the China Post adopted jade as material to make stamps rather than paper. The stamp will have a limited release of 3,000 units to be released this month. You can bet all those philatelists out there are eager to add them to their collection.

For CRI, I'm Liu Min.