259 – Jade

Long Miri had seen many young people coming into auctions to gamble on stones lately. The hype had not died down, and it was expected to increase for years to come. Most amateur stone gamblers started out with smaller stones to try their luck. Although luck was a major element, there were people who had enough knowledge to make a good profit from buying gambling stones.

As one of the floor room sale managers, she assisted with the transaction of the blind rough stones. Over the course of five years, she had seen many raw stones transactions and cuts. It gave her the ability to identify potential jade stones. Seeing her potential, the director of Jade Auction hired her as the senior sales director for Jade Auction. Every 2-3 weeks, she traveled with the crew to different cities to supervise the sale of the rough stones. 

She was in charge of selecting the stones for sealed auction or sales. Stones with good potential would be in the sealed auction hall and stones with low potential were put up for sales. Rough stones ranged from 1,000 yuan to 5,000 per kilogram. The bigger the stones, the bigger the risk, so many amateur jade gamblers tried their luck with the smaller rough stones from 500 yuan to 1,000 yuan.

A man approached her to request the 30 kg stone. She was slightly surprised by his decision. He didn't seem like a regular buyer or the type with gambling addiction. Nevertheless, it was difficult to tell a person's character from their appearance. 

"Mr. Li, are you sure about this transaction?" she asked right before finalizing the sale. She had heard before about people going bankrupt because of gambling stones and she felt the need to warn the man about the potential loss. 90,000 yuan was a lot of money to gamble, and the man looked like he had loan money from a friend.

"Ms. Long, thank you for the concern, but don't worry about it," replied Li Yun. "There’s a technique to analyze rough stones."

Long Miri finished the transaction and asked if he wanted to have it cut. Li Yun agreed as it was a form of advertisement. Li Yun didn't intend to keep the stone. The vast majority of people in the adjacent auction had money, and they were willing to spend it. Raw jadeite was expensive, but a finely crafted jewelry piece could return ten and a hundred times the initial investment depending on the skill of the craftsman.

There were two people ahead of Li Yun in the queue to cut their stones open. Li Yun was not aware if there had been anyone who successfully uncovered a true treasure. He heard clapping before as he was searching, but it was relatively mild. The two people ahead of him, unfortunately, did not score big, but the lifeless jade they uncovered could be sold to minimize the loss.

“Little Yun, you bought a stone?” Elder Fu Yaoshi approached Li Yun after his livestream ended.

“Elder Fu Yaoshi?” Long Miri was surprised that an esteemed appraiser knew of the young man. 

“Ms. Long, how are you?” Elder Fu Yaoshi greeted the woman. 

“Good, we are about to cut Mr. Li’s rough stone,” said Long Miri. “Are you acquainted?”

Elder Fu Yaoshi and Peng Shi were unable to answer as they froze just looking at the large 30 kilogram boulder in front of them. They were aware that Li Yun knew about calligraphy and antiques, but he barely knew anything about jewelry and jade. He had asked so many questions while they were walking the market.

“Little Yun, are you sure you want to spend so much money with gambling stone?” Elder Fu Yaoshi cautioned.

“Don’t worry, I have made a decent amount of money from selling calligraphy and books,” said Li Yun. His calligraphy had been gaining recognition by scholars after Rouxi and Wu Ling published the cookbook. People were starting to collect his scrolls.

When the boulder was placed in the machine, Li Yun was curious, but not overly concerned. The first cut didn't yield much, it still looked like a regular boulder. Li Yun instructed the second cut, however, still no result. At that point, a lot of people were beginning to pity Li Yun. The boulder was not cheap, and it looked like only half of the boulder was left. Li Yun instructed for the third cut, and then the fourth.

The fourth slice fell, revealing an icy green and uniform green. It was not imperial jade, but the kingfisher jade that was slightly less vivid. Although it was less vivid, the specimen that Li Yun owned had very few flaws, very translucent and extremely clear and uniform. There was around 6kg worth of jade left, putting the value at 6 million yuan. Almost immediately, buyers from big jewelry houses offered to buy the piece. Almost immediately, the jade stones sold for 10 million yuan to the Jade Auction but he requested that they reserve 50gram of jade for himself.

"Thank you for selecting us to buy this piece," said Long Miri.

"Not a problem," said Li Yun. "You have mentioned earlier that your company travels to Myan every year for the Gem Emporium. Is it too much to request an invitation?"

"Well, the emporium gives out a limited number of invitations," replied Long Miri. "Even with our company reputation, we could only get 8 invitations. The invite-only policy is to avoid scammers and make sure the potential buyer has enough funding to buy the items. It isn't a regular auction like here. Merchants will be dealing with millions of euros, not yuan."

"Ms. Long, if I find another stone with high quality jade, is there a way to buy a seat at the auction?" asked Li Yun.

"Mr. Li has a way to find jade?"

"I have a trick, but it’s a secret,” Li Yun replied.

Long Miri was curious to see if she could learn a few tricks and agreed. If she couldn’t get upper management to agree, she could give up her own seat for Li Yun if he could really find a high-quality jade.

“The jade must be worth at least 10 million like earlier,” this was the only requirement from Long Miri.

A piece of jade-like that was actually rare to find. Li Yun could not see anything else from the remaining rough stones on the sales floor. Long Miri took him to the back storage area where there were 500 stones placed in rows of shelving. The perimeter was heavily guarded with security. 

Long Miri had a security guard escort him as she returned to the sales floor. She had watched him on the sales floor, and couldn't find anything to his trick or special equipment. As much as she was interested to watch him stare at a piece of stone for 5 minutes, she still had work. 

Out of the 500 stones, around 400 were blind rough stones, the other 100 were cut stones meant for auction in the upcoming days. Li Yun wasn’t able to scan through all 400 on the first day, and it would require all three days to go through the stones.

By the end of the day, Li Yun only found 1 kingfish jade and several high quality jade. A lot of the high quality jade was not big enough to guarantee 10 million yuan, but Li Yun wanted to buy several for himself.

As for the imperial jade, just based on the quality, it was at least 4 million yuan per kilo. Unfortunately, Li Yun had no way of knowing how much was in the stone. All he could see was the qi line and the color. Looking at the 20 kg rough stone, the odd that there was a 3 kg of imperial jade was high.

Li Yun approached Long Miri with a list of 13 rough stones, “Rough stone B17 is for our bet, the other 12 rough stones don't need to be cut, but delivered to the storage facility.”

The total cost of the transaction was close to 1 million yuan. 

"This guy really is a gambler," Long Miri thought.

She quickly instructed her worker to cut B17. Unlike before, the cut was performed in the back, where there were only the workers and security guards. Long Miri also invited her supervisor Du Dingwei to witness.

On the first cut, the entire room was silent. Long Miri and Du Dingwei had never seen a more perfect-looking imperial jade, and it was throughout the entire stone. At the auction, the bid would begin at 100 million yuan. Since Li Yun didn’t need the money immediately, he had agreed to let the Jade Auction handle the auction with a 10% fee while he returned home.

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