We don’t know about the rest of you, but when Chinese New Year rolls around and we start to rake in the ang baos (red packets), rarely do we ever give their designs a second glance. With the precious packets in our hands, 99 percent of the time we’re wondering what we can buy with the wads of cash, while the other one percent is spent fantasizing about a never-ending supply of zero-calorie pineapple tarts (hey, one can dream).
Anyway, if you’ve made the transition from ang bao receiver to ang bao giver recently, you’d have been stocking up on those patterned pieces of paper over the past few weeks. And if you’d like to go the extra mile to impress your relatives, perhaps you can head to Carousell, where people are apparently hawking branded red envelopes for a quick buck.
On the online marketplace, you’ll find all sorts of brands and their boxes of bling-ed out ang baos — including the likes of Lamborghini, Givenchy, Bentley, Dunhill, Bottega Veneta, Prada, and Cartier — with price tags ranging from $98 to $168.
Sure, these look classy and all, but are they worth it? Probably not, especially considering how you can get other ang baos (also from Carousell) at way lower prices — the cheapest we found was a pack for $1.
It could just be us, but we’re pretty sure it’s what’s inside the envelope that counts. Besides, who would pay attention to the design for more than five seconds?
Now excuse us while we head over to our stockpile of Disney Tsum Tsum ang baos… courtesy of Kleenex.
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