Chapter 271 271: The Bidding Began

Joseph laughed but did not reply. Irish looked at the man but could not remember who he was. She approached Belle and asked her about him. Belle told her that his name was Alston. Irish thought of him. The real person looked much younger than in the magazine photo. Soon Alston saw Joseph and walked over to greet him extravagantly, approaching him with open arms. "I thought I'd see you here," he said.

Joseph smiled and shook hands with him. As the two approached, he whispered, "I'm sorry you wasted so many of your human and financial resources yesterday."

Irish was close, so she could hear what Joseph had said, looking at Alston in dismay. Yesterday's kidnapping was related to this English gentleman? Joseph seemed certain of.

Sure enough, Alston's facial muscles twitched after hearing it, but he kept smiling in public and whispered when he approached Joseph again, "Yesterday you were lucky, Mr. Dover. If you don't want the people around you to suffer today, you know what to do. Let me tell you, and I'm going to get this mine." After his speech, he straightened his body and broke out in laughter in front of the public, patting Joseph on the shoulder, "The latter is better, Joseph, today, you'll have to show me mercy."

Joseph continued to smile, but his eyes were cold. When Alston left, she came forward and asked, "What did he say to you?" She did not hear Alston's words clearly, but she could clearly feel the coldness in Joseph's eyes.

"Nothing. Go get some food. Your favorite foie gras is provided." Joseph reached for her hand and squeezed it.

Irish hesitated to look at him for a long time before nodding her head. "What do you want? I'll go get it with Belle."

"Red wine," he said.

"You are only allowed to drink champagne." Irish chuckled.

His eyebrows were raised, and he looked helpless, "Isabel."

"Or not? Otherwise, there is water. "

Joseph had to surrender, draw her closer, and lower his voice. "You are like a housewife!"

Irish's face turned red, and she pushed him away and went to the dining area with Belle.

****

The bidding began.

Hall came to the stage as the head of the mine and gave a detailed introduction of the mine for the bidders present.

The M100 meteor crater contained a huge diamond mine about 50 kilometers in diameter. According to the geologists' survey, the mine had a history of nearly 40 million years, and its diamond reserves amounted to tens of billions of carats, enough to meet the global diamond market for the next two thousand years of demand.

The M100-2 diamond mine on the southwest side of the crater is one of the best parts of the M100.

"As we all know, at the last auction, the Runestone Group succeeded in bidding for M100-1, which has brought huge profits to the Runestone Group." Hall stood on the stage, behind him was a huge curtain presenting a video of the meteor crater, and he joked, "It won't be as easy for you to take the M100-2 mine this time. Look at all the bidders who are watching you. It's not hard to see that they smell huge profits on you."

Joseph smiled softly.

Others also laughed.

"The reason why M100-2 is more valuable than the M100-1 is that, in terms of the current mine, I believe most people have already seen the rough stone of the pink diamonds on the surface. This stone alone is enough to prove that it is not impossible to produce colored diamonds in South Africa. I specifically asked an evaluation team to assess the value of the stone. The preliminary estimate of the stone alone is as high as 50 million US dollars. The value we can see is as high as that, and the initial estimate of diamond storage in the M100-2 diamond mine accounts for 2/5 of the entire M100 crater, which is far more valuable than our previous estimates."

Hall drank some water and pointed to the screen. "At today's diamond market price of $5,000/carat, the value of the entire M100 rough mine could be as high as 4 trillion. This is a mine that the government has blocked for years. It was only in the last two years that we began to divide it and started the bidding process."

With a glass of wine in her hand, Irish listened to Hall's introduction on the stage, but her heart seemed to be extremely surprised. God, she had stood on a $4 trillion diamond mine. She thought that the mine they were bidding on was already worth a lot of money, but she never considered that it was just the tip of the iceberg. It was only after Hall's introduction that she realized how poor she was. The numbers that popped out of his mouth were astronomical, and she was astounded.

But after her experience in South Africa, she also understood that the greater the wealth, the greater the risk. In this weird world, people's minds were hard to read, and that's what this industry was all about.

Hall introduced it and talked about the pink diamonds from M100-2, which increased the investment value of the mine. Seeing these eager rich businessmen, Irish was confused for a moment and became even more hesitant about Tuell's words. Was this mine really empty?

While she was thinking, the bidding on the M100-2 mine had started at a base price of 200 million with an increase of 100 million at a time. The floor price was extremely low in terms of diamond reserves, but it did not mean that the bidders would be able to bid for the mine at a low price. Sure enough, some people put out a price, one after another, shouting prices in a row.

Only three people remained silent: Leo, Alston, and Joseph.

Alston looked like he was watching a play, and Leo was still sitting lazily in his chair, eating fruit with a tray in his hand, while Joseph was tasting champagne. Irish saw clearly that those who bid at the first bid were like shrimps in the sea, and the real sharks had not yet started their games.