£20,000 Nuts!

The madness of the money system continues, and you really couldn't make this stuff up..........from Reuters:

" China is trying hard to revive interest in its ailing stock market, but some investors are instead shelling out big money on an asset they can hold in the palms of their hands - walnuts. With more traditional investments like stocks and property offering only small, or sometimes negative, returns over the last few years, a market in so-called "cultural playthings" has sprouted up, sending prices for large walnuts, for instance, into the tens of thousands of dollars.

Once the toys of China's imperial court, the walnuts -- which when rotated in one's palm are thought to stimulate blood circulation -- are making a comeback among the wealthy, some of whom see them as not only a place to put their cash, but as a distinctly Chinese status symbol. The bigger, older and more symmetrical, the better, says collector Kou Baojun in Beijing, who owns over 30 pairs of walnuts, most of which are over a century old and have taken on a reddish shine from years of polishing in the palm.

"Look how well these have aged. Playing with these kinds of walnuts isn't for ordinary people," Kou said. 

Interest from collectors like Kou has made walnuts big business for merchants like Hu Zhenyuan, who buys entire trees from farmers ahead of the harvest to supply his shop in Beijing.

"Walnut investments go up every year. A pair of walnuts at 350 yuan (£35) 10 years ago can sell for 3,500 yuan or even 20,000 or 30,000 yuan," Hu said.

The walnut craze peaked in 2010, as Beijing's steps to put the brakes on property market speculation left few places for the wealthy to park their money.
But with the stock market now down by nearly 40 percent over the past three years and few options for investing overseas, the market for walnuts and other trinkets, such as gourds to house crickets, continues to thrive. One pair for sale on a popular walnut trading website is listed at over £20,000."

Do you really think this is a sane system worth keeping when a pair of nuts can be worth a year's salary of many UK workers? And they tell us socialism is a mad idea.....

SussexSocialist