In the house of Mr. Fu Yabi, a 79-year-old man living in South Bedok, Singapore, there are thousands of albums containing red envelopes of all shapes, sizes, colors, and appearing times. He shared that in the past he used to exchange red packets with people with similar interests at the Sungei flea market until 2017 when the market was closed, he switched to collecting from temple-goers.

He doesn’t remember how many red packets he currently has. The red packets he collects come in a variety of colors and themes, from famous beauties in Chinese history such as Yang Guifei and Wang Zhaojun to the green envelope used by Muslims in Malaysia during Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan in October according to the Islamic calendar.

The oldest envelopes of Mr. Fu date back to the 1940s, issued by OCBC Bank, with pictures of Sanxing, God of Wealth, or a boat sailing with the meaning of everything going off without a hitch.

The red packets collected by Mr. Fu are all valuable. The lowest selling price is about 2.2 USD/envelope. He rarely sells the red envelopes he has, only occasionally sells new models to earn some money or sometimes gives them to friends.

According to Zaobao, zingnews.vn AND newsnpr.org