As every December over last few years, retired teacher Li Mi in Beijing started to collect thick stacks of postcards sent by her former students from her mailbox in the weeks running up to the New Year.

But this time she has received a lot of the same postcards with images of the Beijing Olympic mascot Fuwa on them. This winter the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) has authorized China Post Group to issue New Year Postcards with the five Fuwa images

"My students know me so well," said Li, an avid postcard collector.

"As an important medium of recording the Beijing Olympics, these Fuwa postcards will be issued only once, which has enhanced their value for collection," said Wang Qindong, a spokesman for China Post Group.

As the 2008 Olympic Games draw near, Olympics-themed items, especially Olympic-licensed merchandise, are gaining popularity with collectors in China.

China Post Group has unveiled plans to issue a series of Olympics-themed stamps in 2008. Before presales officially started in December, long queues of people waited to make presale reservations in November. The craze for collecting Olympic memorabilia has gone far beyond host city Beijing. In southern city Shenzhen, nearly 2,000 km from Beijing, all the reservations were taken in a number of days after reservation sales began on November 12.

To commemorate the 300-day countdown to the Beijing Olympics on November 13, 2007, BOCOG authorized the Beijing Stamp Company to unveil an Olympics-themed stamp scroll with images of the Olympic emblem, the Fuwa mascots, and 38 Olympic pictograms, as well as 128 characterized Olympic stamps. The 6.33-meter-long scroll is the longest of its kind in China. This scroll quickly sold out with many collectors buying more than one set. Some collectors regard it as the only opportunity to collect a top-end Olympics-themed postal product issued in China.

The complicated production procedures, including selecting material for the scroll design presentation box, delayed the originally planned debut by five months.

The collection of stamps for the Beijing Olympic Games has already brought an overnight fortune to many Chinese stamp collectors. Zhang Yanhui, who has been collecting stamps for 20 years, went to queue for the debut of the first set of Beijing-Olympics-commemorative stamps featuring the emblem and mascot, which was issued on November 12, 2005 to commemorate the 1,000-day countdown to the Beijing Olympics. While his fellow collectors were thinking whether it was a wise investment, Zhang bought 1,500 stamps featuring the Olympic emblem at the price of 45 yuan each, which spiraled to over 100 yuan in a matter of days. Zhang sold his emblem stamps at between 105 yuan and 125 yuan, making a profit of over 90,000 yuan ($12,329).

The specialty of Chongqing collector Chen Xian is Coke cans and bottles with Olympic images. As a football fan and sports collector, about one year ago Chen read news on the Internet and knew for the first time that Coke cans were gaining popularity among collectors in Shanghai and Guangzhou. He learned that Coca Cola cans commemorating the 1992 Barcelona Olympics were priced at 3,000 yuan ($411) each and the price for a glass bottle with an Olympic emblem had risen to over 1,000 yuan.

The growing number of collectors for Olympics-themed Coke cans in Chongqing, estimated to be several dozen, has prompted the antique market in the city to recently open an area dedicated to the trade of Coke cans and bottles.

Commemorative Coke cans and bottles are priced delicately based on their material, images and intactness. "Older cans and bottles that are on the brink of extinction are more valuable. Cans with images of Olympic images and celebrities are also rising in value," said Chen. He said in terms of rarity, the issuance only 1 million of some commemorative cans with Olympic emblems makes them more valuable than Olympic stamps. He added, "The prices of these Olympics-related commemorative cans will hike further with the approach of Beijing Olympic Games."

Collectors in China are faced with the difficulty in choosing the most valuable among thousands of gifts, collectibles and memorabilia featuring the Beijing Olympics.

"Collectors should evaluate both the cultural value and investment value of these items. Cultural value includes the significance of the commemorated event, artistic value of the item and whether it is a limited edition," said Li Xiang, a sports collection expert from the China Association of Collectors. He went on to explain that collectors should buy items with cultural elements. He said, for example, the collection value of Olympic commemorative silver plates is higher than that of silver bars since the former has a much better chance of increasing in value.

Many Chinese people are buying daily items with Olympic references, such as hats, gloves and key rings. Experts say these people are strictly souvenir buyers rather than Olympic collectors.

Guangzhou-based antique collection expert Liang Jie said the reserves of real Olympic collectors will go beyond one Olympic Games and include not only licensed merchandise. Yin Min, Editor in Chief of a Zhejiang-based publication for coin, banknote and medal collectors, reminded people who are going to collect Olympics-related items that they can collect items based on their interests.

Other collection experts said interested sports collectors with smaller budgets can choose more unusual items on the Olympics, such as posters, Olympics tickets, prepaid phone cards with Olympic images and even newspaper supplements featuring Olympic news.

Beijing-based newspaper the Economic Information Daily under Xinhua News Agency was quoted as commenting, "The frenzy of collecting Olympics-related items is still at its infant stage while the peak will come after the Olympic Games."

Zhen Weigang, head of a coin collectors association in Guangdong Province, said that the craze for Olympic items is still in its rising stages, which he estimated would peak between May and August of 2008.

Liang said, "The craze for Olympic items collection will last for another half a year in the wake of the Olympics, then it will enter a cooling stage. But the potential for value growth remains huge in the long run."