Hammer first presented to Huang Xuan the masterpiece of Aivazovsky, "Ice on the Dnieper". This was a Russian artist that the Americans liked, but in Russia, this painter was known by almost everyone. Unfortunately, this painting already had an owner back in his own plane. If he brought this painting back home, then there would be two copies of "Ice on the Dnieper".
Seeing Huang Xuan shake his head, Hammer took out another painting without changing his expression. This time, it was "Picking Apples" by Natalia Goncharova painted in 1909. Again, this painting was already owned by someone else. Seeing this, Huang Xuan decided to directly name some painters and asked: "Mr. Hammer, do you have any paintings by Oleg Vassiliev?"
"Yes. Let me find it for you." Hammer was a little surprised. This name was unfamiliar to non-Russians.
"How about this 'Before the Sunset'?" Huang Xuan nodded gladly, this was a contemporary oil painting, which Rolin estimated to be worth 500,000 pounds. Transporting this painting back, would require no more than $5000 USD worth of energy since it weighed less than 500g.
"Put it away for me," Huang Xuan said to Hans. He didn't even ask about the price.
The old soldier went over to pickup the painting directly, but a distressed hammer stopped him at once. He called over an attendant to pickup the painting and said, "Mr. Huang, this painting is priced at $3800 USD, of course..."
"Do I need to pay right now?" Huang Xuan interrupted him.
"Certainly not." Hammer had the sense of a businessman, he took one look at Huang Xuan and said: "You can keep on picking."
Huang Xuan laughed and said: "I heard that you brought over some Tsar Imperial Easter Eggs?" Among the art works that Hammer brought from Russia, the Faberge Imperial Easter Eggs would be the most valuable. Starting from 1886, the royal jeweller Faberge would make a easter egg for the Tsarina every year. This unique egg was made with various precious gemstones embedded it in. These eggs would be praised by many people in the future. However, at the beginning, the price of these eggs would only be around $400 USD to $500 USD. Seventy years later though, the price of these eggs would be at least $3,000,000 USD.
Hammer quickly brought out ten more eggs from the storage room. Although these classic Imperial Easter eggs had been seen by the public during the world expo in 1900, but the American's during the great depression were skeptical of how well these eggs could retain its value. It wasn't until several years later, that the value of these eggs were finally recognized.
Huang Xuan was disappointed, among these eggs, only three of them had never been seen before, that means he could only bring three of them back home. Of course, this disappointment was only temporary. He only needed to use 14 banknotes that he printed and he would earn at least $10,000,000 USD. Also, the energy required to transport these eggs back wouldn't exceed five million units of energy, was there a better deal than this?
With Rolin's help, Huang Xuan spoke one name after another. Very quickly, the number of attendants beside him went from 1, to 2, and then to 4...
By the time it got dark, Huang Xuan had picked out around 400 paintings and 70 pieces of jewelry. The criteria he used to choose were simple. First the item can't exists back in P112, his home plane, or at least there can't be any records of ownership. Second, the cost of transporting the item needed to be much lower than its value. The second point was important, since there was usually a lot of silver and gold on the jewelry, Huang Xuan couldn't help but give up on these items. Silver and gold required a lot of energy to transport back, so most of the time, it really wasn't worth it. Small amounts of gemstones and pearls won't increase the cost in this area. For this reason, Huang Xuan really liked Faberge's works. His extensive use of ceramics and precious stones greatly reduced the amount of energy required.
As for those extremely valuable duplicate art works, Huang Xuan was really tempted to bring some back for his private collection, but he needed to consider the fact that it might reduce the energy in the buffer zone, even if its just a small chance. So, Huang Xuan decided to give up on the idea. Instead of keeping these things that he didn't really understand, it was better to take the safer path.
After he chose the last item, Huang Xuan smiled and let out a smile of relief. He then turned to the tense Hammer and asked: "How much?" His tone of void was as if he had just finished eating a bowl of noodles at a restaurant.
"The total is $7,800,680 USD." answered the accountant as the side. The most expensive items were the jewelry, compared to the works of unknown artists, the items in the Russian Royal collection had much more investment potential. Hammer's eyes sparkled as he looked at Huang Xuan and thought, "If this guy can't afford..."
"So much!" Huang Xuan really couldn't afford it, he only had $3,000,000 USD in the bank and it wasn't convenient to take out the cash from the plane passage right now. He took a look at the visibly upset Hammer and said: "I don't have enough money on me right now. How about I pay a deposit first?"
"The company's rules requires a deposit of 40%." The accountant made the number 40% loud and clear.
Huang Xuan laughed awkwardly, he took out the bank book from Chase Manhattan Bank and said: "I only have 2.6 million, I don't think its enough..."
"It's enough." Seeing the bank book, Hammer let out a sigh of relief then hurriedly said: "A $2,000,000 USD deposit is enough. Mr. Huang, when do you want to pick up these works?"
Hearing Hammer's words, Huang Xuan was flabbergasted, that meant he couldn't take these works now. He didn't mind though, he tossed his bank book over to Hammer and said: "Let's go to the bank together to transfer the money, I'll leave the stuff here for now."
"OK." Hammer agreed readily. Only now, did he start to relax. It was 1931, an income of 7.8 million in one day could only be achieved in either the art or arms industry.
At Chase Manhattan Bank, Joseph helped transfer the money to Hammer. After Hammer left, Huang Xuan brought three more bags into the office, each one carrying 30kg of green bills.
Although Chase Manhattan Bank was known as the "Capital Whole-seller", Joseph had never seen so much cash before. As a comparison, before the Silver Purchase Act in 1934, one silver dollar from China was only worth $0.26 USD, while 100 kg of 100 dollar bills was equivalent to 38.46 million silver coins, that was equal to three quarters of China's trade surplus that year. Due to the fact that all the countries experiencing economic crisis were all using a gold standard, the surplus experienced by the silver standard using China surpassed previous years.
Hans was already becoming resistant to these banknotes. Back then, when Huang Xuan gave him $2000 USD, he was excited for a long time, but now seeing these bundles of green bills, the feeling was completely different.
A few bank attendants gruellingly counted this enormous amount of bills. At that time, Rockefeller came from upstairs and shook hand with Huang Xuan. "Mr. Huang, I was just thinking of looking for you."
"Oh?" Huang Xuan certainly knew the reason, so he gestured for Hans to come over and said, "Go get the designs from the car."
Rockefeller grinned, the design for an airplane required almost 10,000 pages, a car wouldn't be able to fit them all, so he coughed and asked: "Mr. Huang, how much is this design?"
"Not very expensive." said Huang Xuan while smiling. "I've prepared 200 pages of design. You can get someone to go over the designs first, we can talk about the price then if you're still interested." Huang Xuan drank some coffee and thought: "I should already be home by then."
Rockefeller made a few polite remarks and left. Joseph then handed the new deposit receipt to Huang Xuan and said, "Mr. Huang, the total is $9,807,400 USD."
"Thank you."
At night, Manhattan remained the busiest district in New York. It was filled with banks, shops, companies and offices. The tall building were like cold mountains and the clear glass forming the walls were like crystal palaces. The ladies strolled leisurely there, as if they were touring around the World Expo.
The multicolored street lights shimmered, high and low, far and close. The dense traffic was like a spiders web, it almost made one forget that they were in the great depression. The lights on the slow moving seemed real and virtual, seemed true and like a fantasy, sometimes on, sometimes off, like this plane, this space-time.
The many stars overhead were vast and slow, their light shining on the people on the streets different skin colors and nationalities.
Walking down the greek stairs of Chase Manhattan Bank, Huang Xuan wiped his face hard, as if he was trying to wipe away his fatigue. He hadn't slept for 24 hours. Sitting with these world-renown business men, the pressure could drive the strength from his chest, but his bones stubbornly supported his body.
Hans worriedly looked at Huang Xuan and asked: "Are we returning to the Hilton?"
"We're going to West 47th Street." One cannot leave things until the last day. Huang Xuan understood this advice from his mom, instead of hoping things all go smoothly, work hard and finish the work before problems appear.
New York's West 47th Street wasn't more famous than Fifth Avenue, but if you needed to find this thing, you would hear people mention the following names: Antwerp Central Station, New York's West 47th Street, London's Hatton Garden, Ramat Gan in Tel Aviv, the Opera House District of Bombay and the Diamond City of India. That's right, all these places sold diamonds.
Unlike the other places in the list, New York's West 47th Street also sold other gemstones. Huang Xuan didn't care about what other things they sold though, as according to Rolin's info, Huang Xuan could find what he needed here. Although diamond certificates were annoying, it wasn't more annoying than being poor.
Huang felt that this time has been the most unscrupulous since he started his Plane hopping travels because printing banknotes had too many requirements: There could be no other Plane bases, banknotes needed to be in use, it needed to be an era where the printing press existed, it needed to be when commercial development was advanced and it needed to be at a place where materials could be easily purchased. All this indicated that there is a limit to this craziness.
Since he was already in this crazy era, in crazy New York, Huang Xuan wouldn't waste a single chance as there was still a cost to printing banknotes.
It was 8pm, the Nordstrom store was still open, like all the other business that had opened since the depression started and the boss, Nordstrom has been working harder than before. He inspected the counters, encouraged the staff, chatted with the customers and introduced products to them, even if the ring was only worth $30 USD.
As Hans opened the glass door carefully for Huang Xuan, dazzling light reflected back from the jewels and blinded them for a moment. Huang Xuan smiled.
Nordstrom noticed the tall Hans right away, he hurried forward and came to Huang Xuan, who was looking around, and said: "Sir, are you looking for jewellery?"
"Yes." Huang Xuan was wearing a suit he had bought at Macy's, looking like a gentleman who was going to a party. Even Hans was wearing a tailored suit. When Hans was getting his suit, he even said, "A few pieces of scrap clothes is worth $3,000 USD?"
The terse reply did not affect Nordstrom's enthusiasm, his face was full of youthful enthusiasm. He used a Western greeting and extended his right arm, pointed it forward and said: "Welcome to Nordstrom. I'm the boss, Nordstrom. You won't go wrong with Nordstrom if you're looking for jewellery."
This was the typical American style, assertive, confident but not necessarily true. Huang Xuan smiled and handed his hat to Hans. "I'd like to purchase some accessories for my family and friends."
"Yes." Nordstrom prolonged the 's' sound and held his fists tightly. It seems that he understood, that he had met an important customer.
Nordstrom led Huang Xuan to a private room. "Are you a diplomat? Japanese?" he asked while waiting for the attendant to get the jewellery.
Huang Xuan smiled, and just said, "My surname is Huang."
Nordstrom seemed to have no idea, and went on to introduce the jewellery. When the attendant brought over the jewellery, he got even more excited.
During the early 20th century, plain gemstones, new ones that had no history behind them, were not too expensive. Take diamonds for example: Hope, the most famous diamond in the world, the blue diamond also known as the Diamond of Misfortune, was bought by Selim Habib of Turkey for $400,000 USD. In 1911, it was sold to the Washington Post scion Edward McLean for $114,000 USD. In the new age, the price would increase by at least 10 times. This is, if the Smithsonian Institute was willing to sell it and if someone was willing to buy it.
Although the price of jewels didn't depreciate during the depression, it didn't increase either. Normally, the diamonds at Nordstrom be priced from $400 to $2,000 USD, but this didn't meet Huang Xuan's requirements. Since he couldn't bring home the certificates to authenticate these diamonds, the price of these low value diamonds would be several times lower, to the point where he might not be able to sell them. Also, it costs energy for Rolin to bring these diamonds back. Even though its cheaper to bring back the carbon-based diamonds, it would still cost tens of thousands of energy units. The diamonds must be worth at least 100,000 RMB, otherwise he would be losing money.
Seeing Huang Xuan shake his head, Nordstrom began to get a little worried. He sent the attendant away and asked, "What do you think, Mr. Huang?"
"I'm looking for jewellery without much metal. For Diamonds it must be a carat diamond, 4C grading needs to be high and it needs to have good value preservation. As for other gemstones, I personally like ruby, for sapphires, the color should be uniform and I don't want crystals." Carat diamonds are those that are at least 1 carat in size, although thats only 0.2g, bigger diamonds are always better. There is a huge difference in price between diamonds of different sizes.
Nordstrom's eyes almost popped out at this. Among gemstones, ruby and sapphires were two of the most valuable, slightly better ones would cost almost $10,000 USD. Not to mention diamonds, 1 grade level in the 4C rating would increase the price sharply. He looked at Huang Xuan's attire again, nodded and said: "Please wait for a moment." After that, he turned and left the room.
Huang Xuan casually drank some tea while waiting. Before coming here, he had already spent $3,000,000 USD at other jewellery stores. By tomorrow, almost everyone in the jewellery industry would know about the young and rich Asian man that swept through New York City.
____________________________
For the next three days, Huang Xuan met with Steve, Sloan and Rockefeller several more times and sold four more designs. Probably within the next few years, the European Auto Industry will suffer some heavy losses.
At the end, Rockefeller wasn't able to get the design of the Boeing 307 that he dreamed about. The amount offered by Ford and GM got higher and higher, until the end, when the design of the BMW 326 was sold for $1,200,000 USD. Compared to the output of the Beta Factory though, where $50,000,000 USD worth of banknotes were printed each day, it was like a hair compared to nine cows.
Although the amount earned from the three companies wasn't much, but they guaranteed the safety of Huang Xuan's funds. Besides the $120,000,000 USD processed by Chase Manhattan Bank, Citigroup signed a deposit of $80,000,000 USD, HSBC closed $48,000,000 USD and the United Bank did $28,000,000 USD.
According to the American spirit, no one would assume Huang Xuan's money was illegal without proof, no one would reject a large customer. Even if the money was illegal, they wouldn't lose anything. Of course, Huang Xuan wouldn't lose anything either.
Using this money, Huang Xuan kept buying various jewellery, paintings, antiques, stamps and other collectibles. His only standard was the profit margin. If Rolin estimated the item to be worth $1,000,000 back home, then it must use no more than $100,000 USD worth of energy to transport it. Later on, the standard was set to $10,000 USD, then to $5,000 USD. Since the base could only get 200,000,000 units of energy at most, that means, to guarantee safety, only 150,000,000 units of energy could be used to transport items, that was around $10,000,000 USD worth of energy. Seeing that there wasn't anyone trustworthy in Brazil, they couldn't temporarily increase the energy reserve. Regrettably, Huang Xuan needed to leave most of the ceramics, enamel and the rest of the money back in P101. On a whim, he sent all these items back to China. As for who received these items, he didn't care.
Of course, the return of many art works was over 100 times, but in one short week, he wasn't able to buy too many.
After the forth time Huang Xuan walked out of Hammer's department store, Armand Hammer was already Huang Xuan's best friend. He had sold to Huang Xuan $89,000,000 USD worth of art, most of which were from Russia. During that time, the "Generous Chinese" Huang Xuan hadn't haggled even once. Except for the duplicates, Huang Xuan purchased all the lost art works. It was said, that the Red Capitalist (Hammer) had also reached his profit goal during the depression: $4,000,000 USD. According to Rolin, his profit was probably over $20,000,000 USD, but that didn't matter.
The vintage car seemed to float as it moved, colorful curtains were shown in the window, the bright colors was like Huang Xuan's mood at the moment.
Huang Xuan shook hands with Hammer again and said, "I'm going back to China now, I hope Mr. Hammer will visit one day."
"I will, I will." Hammer strongly shook his hand.
"Right not, my country is not peaceful. I don't know when it will develop and become stronger. By that time, I might not be around, but I hope Mr. Hammer will visit and take care of it for me."
Hammer was sad to hear that. He held Huang Xuan's hands and repeated, "I will, I will."
Huang Xuan smiled and got in the car. Hans closed the door emotionlessly behind him. The Ford Model T emitted a thick cloud of smoke, like the dust of history.
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