Book 1: Chapter 6: (9)

「We are open and we buy gold! We inspect by the weight! Come on in and show us your gold! 」

I was feeling kind of nervous for some reason. When I entered the shop, it said on the billboard that they carry out very detailed inspections of gold. That’s good, I see, so they really do inspect and buy gold based on the percentage of the minerals inside. It said so on the website online too though, but it was good to be sure of it. I called out to the lady working behind the counter.

「Excuse me, I’d like to sell this gold here, would you mind inspecting it and telling me how much it’s worth for me? 」

「Is that so? Very well, then first I’d like to have you write down your name and address on this form here. Also, do you have a valid ID on you? 」

「Uh yeah, is a driver’s license okay? 」

I had the driver’s license that I had forced myself to get. Of course, I didn’t have a car to drive though.

「Yes that will be fine. Let’s have a look at your gold then. 」

「Sure, here you go. 」

「Huh? Oh my, you have some unusually large gold coins with you, don’t you? I’ve never seen this kind of work before… 」

「Ahh, uhm, actually I’m not really sure if they’re gold coins or not, to be honest. They’re just something that I had suddenly found in my grandma’s storage one day, so I’m not sure what they are… 」

The dungeon world’s Gadeus Empire doesn’t seem to focus that much on design with their coins. They don’t carve in numbers or letters into them at all so they appear to be regular looking gold pieces. With that being said, I was able to just easily claim it was some kind of weird gold medal I had found in my grandma’s house. If I told them it was some country’s currency or if it had some historical value, with how the laws work in Japan, I wasn’t sure if they would trade it in for me. While I was thinking to myself, in the meantime, the lady behind the counter pulled out a thick catalog and compared the gold coin to the images drawn there.

Actually, when I did some research online, the price of gold seems to have a different price margin in different countries, so foreigners often come and sell gold here in Japan. It appears like there are some people that do it illegally and then get caught at the airport after they didn’t pay customs tax on it, but other than that it’s totally legal to bring here and sell.

「Yes, it does not appear to be any type of currency or gold coin I’m familiar with, so then since there seems to be no historical worth to take into account, I’ll take it to the back and measure out the weight for you. Please wait here for a minute. 」

I did it! I can’t believe that it might really work! I can probably bring any gold coin that I can find here, no matter where the origins are from in the other world! And I also don’t think that the gold exchange shop will get in trouble either, because they are actually using gold to make them. With that being said, I waited about 30 minutes until the shop worker came back out to talk to me.

「I believe that this tiny medal will be worth approximately 9400 Yen¹. 」

So the Gadeus Cold coins with no carvings or numbers will be about 10000 yen² each. That’s really not too bad at all. My heart fluttered a bit but I wondered if it would be worth all the effort of hauling them down here to trade.

「And for the gold medal with the human design on it… 」

I wondered how much the Imperial Gold Coin would be worth. The first emperor’s face was carved onto it so it made me a little bit nervous.

「We will take it for exactly 97000 yen³. 」

W-Wait, what did she just say?! T-That’s almost 100000 yen⁴!! Is this some kind of joke?!

「Wait… Are you serious? 」

「Yes. And as for the biggest medal, it seems to be a mixture of gold and some platinum. 」

Wait, platinum is more expensive than gold right? But even more than that, the white gold coin is flat out way bigger than every other coin, so by default, it’s guaranteed to have even more gold inside of it!

「We would have to do more research about it first, so I am sorry but we are not able to currently buy it today.」

This is crazy, is this for real? The other world’s money was said to increase in value by 10-fold for each coin, and the difference between the regular Gadeus Gold Coin and the Imperial Gold Coin was absolutely crazy. They really did have a difference of about 10 times the value! If that’s how much that the two lower-priced coins went for, how much would the white coin be?

「Well then, we are able to currently purchase both the small and medium-sized gold coins for now, in the meantime, would you care to leave the bigger one here at the shop so we can do more research on it? You could come back after a few days and we would probably be able to offer you a fair price. 」

「Uhm, no sorry, I think for now would it be okay to just sell you just the tinier coin? I have some more I want to bring too, so next time I might have to bring them here if that would be okay. 」

I left the shop in a flustered panic. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing at all. I had suddenly become 9400 yen richer. However, if you were to ask me why exactly I only sold them the tinier Gadeus Gold Coin, it’s because they are the tiniest coin and they also have no markings or anything identifiable on them. They appeared like just a regular gold medal from our world. If I were to bring in a bunch of Imperial Gold Coins with that weird emperor’s head carved into them, they would probably mistake it as some historical artifact, an ancient civilization’s currency, or just flat out wouldn’t accept them. It would definitely look like some other world’s currency that would cause some mass confusion I thought. They might even think that I’m some depraved criminal grave robber or something.

So, with that, I decided that if I exchange this gold in Japan, it would probably be the safest course of action to only sell the Gadeus Gold Coins because they appear like average gold medals. I figured this was the safest way to cover my tracks and not get into any kind of trouble with the law.

「But, they said that they would each go for about 10000 yen right…so that means if I were to… 」

I smiled and laughed to myself while tossing the white gold coin into the air and catching it. I just had an amazing plan.

「Fufufu… Then that means this white gold coin…if I take it to the above-ground in the dungeon world and then exchange them for regular old Gadeus Gold Coins…I could probably get about 100 of them right? Then if I sell those gold coins here… this could turn out quite nicely. 」

I smiled to myself and continued walking on my back home.

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