The Lost Tomb Vol. 7

Chapter 8: Feast for Collectors

As I looked at the tables and display stands being set up on the stage below, I immediately knew that the auction I had just seen on the notice downstairs was about to start. The dark environment and noisy voices suddenly made me feel a little guilty. Seeing the old woman's blank expression, I had a premonition that I might have done something stupid, and it must have something to do with this auction.

A thought flashed through my mind, but I couldn't seem to catch it. I only felt like the stool under my ass seemed to be made of thorns and started to feel uncomfortable.

My self-esteem had me pretending to be calm, but based on my current level, it was difficult to completely hide my anxiety from the circle's bigwigs. It might have been better to stand up at this time and admit defeat. I was very conflicted, but after thinking it over, I decided to save face and wait.

I looked at how Fatty was holding up, and noticed he also seemed a little nervous. This wasn't his territory, and it seemed that he was also feeling a little guilty. But on second thought, we went through a mountain of daggers and sea of flames, so what could happen here? At the very least, we wouldn't lose our heads if we were driven out of here.

With this thought, I immediately relaxed and smiled at the old woman while thinking, you underestimated me too quickly. I've been on the border of life and death several times. This scene is nothing.

I sat up and looked at the unfolding situation attentively.

The stage had been quickly set up with an auction table and a display base. A staff member came on stage with a microphone, while others were setting up lights. These people were all wearing waiters' uniforms, and it appeared the auction wasn't being handled by an auction company. It was a private internal auction, and everyone in the industry was playing here.

Fatty had told me just now while we were waiting that the most notable thing about the auction here was that he didn't recognize any experts or scholars, and the emphasis was on the strength of one's vision and connections. Since most of the things sold here couldn't be evaluated, and no one had ever seen them, you didn't have a benchmark for how much to bid. You might feel that it could sell for five million yuan, but if the other party could find someone willing to offer ten million, then you couldn't do anything about it.

In other words, if you wanted to play here, you first needed to know what was being sold and how much it was worth before you could speak. That required getting a response in a very short period of time, so it could be said that this was the place where Beijing's antiques dealers played most heartily.

Moreover, the most frightening thing was that this place could also sell fakes. You had to be a person who could judge things at a glance, because fakes that could blend into this place were probably beyond the scope of normal fakes. In popular terms, it was a kind of thing called "original single goods". This was still a recent concept on the internet, where a batch of goods was genuinely produced by real factories, but hadn't been shipped. Instead, the factories bypassed the brand manufacturers and sold them themselves. As a result, there was an awkward situation where the quality details were exactly the same as the genuine one, but it wasn't actually the genuine item.

Of course, the original goods in the collection industry weren't the surplus of ancient factories, but what counterfeiters had copied with extremely superb technology to look exactly like the real thing. This thing was definitely a fake, but you couldn't find its flaw through any appraisal. Such things had appeared in today's antique world, and the cost was also very astonishing. It was possible to make only one in a thousand, so it was necessary to find a way to maximize the profit of this excellent product.