I Spy With My Secret Eyes

Chapter 35

Gregory came back just after dusk, and he also brought back seven pieces of top-notch-looking raw stones.

The official auction would auction were usually raw jadeites with an outer surface reaching a certain quality level while those with rather rough looks would be directly sold off in the offline channels at corresponding prices.

In order to better attend to Oliver and Hailey, Gregory bought a sumptuous feast back from one of the best restaurants in the city to treat them. Just like that, he shared a meal with Oliver, Hailey, and Fabian.

After finishing the food, Gregory served coffee. He seemed to underst

meals.

that Clusians had the habit of drinking coffee after

Indeed, there was no safety hazard in the barracks. Oliver was elated, for he had had a good time practicing shooting during the day.

Fabian told Oliver and Hailey a lot about Mancherniuses, such as Gregory’s name.

Mancherniuses did not have a surname but only first names.

Their names were preceded by various respectful names or titles to indicate social or official ranks.

Gregory was a commander, so his seniors and peers addressed him by his first name. In the army setting, however, the soldiers addressed him as Commander Gregory.

Therefore, he had only the name “Gregory” while the word commander was nothing more than his military rank. After Oliver enjoyed some coffee, he expressed his gratitude toward Gregory. “Gregory, thanks for the hospitality. I’m also very grateful that we were able to practice shooting today. In addition, since you’ve returned, could we take a look at the raw stones that would be auctioned at the official auction first? Could you sell me the stone I’m interested in in advance?”

Fabian translated his words to Gregory on the spot. The latter pondered for a while before answering, “It seemed that there won’t be a problem. You could make your choice first, and should you want to buy any of them, I’ll present you with two -options. First, I contact my boss, and you offer a slightly higher price than the selling price placed at the official auction.

That slightly higher price was actually to bribe my boss. Second, you participate in the auction held at the official auction, and I secretly pass down a message to each buyer to prevent them from bidding for the raw stone you want.”

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Considering that Gregory was the top military officer in charge of the official auctions, those buyers would show him reverence and do him a favor.

Oliver nodded in agreement. As long as he had his eye on a particular raw jadeite, it must already be pricey. As such, he would not mind paying a tad extra.

Behind the barracks was the warehouse, storing the raw jadeites. It was heavily guarded by eight soldiers in three shifts round the clock.

When Gregory came into sight, the soldiers quickly became high-spirited and saluted the man. They opened the gate of the warehouse according to their commander’s instruction. The group was then led inside.

Hailey’s sprained ankle had gotten much better at that point. Gregory had even fetched her a walking cane from the hospital.

When the lights in the warehouse were turned on, the interior was as bright as the sun. It had an area spanning tens of thousands of square feet wide. There was not a single window inside, except for a gate, totally resembling a solid casket.

On the ground, there were neatly placed raw stones that would be auctioned at the official auction in a few days. Adding in those Gregory had brought back with him that day, there were 244 pieces in total. Large ones were over 2,000 pounds, and the smaller ones had roughly the size of a basketball.

Each stone had a detailed registration card. Fabian interpreted and explained to both Oliver and Hailey while reading the information on the card one by one.

The official auction solely aimed to maximize the benefits and let buyers compete for higher prices.

After a long period of time, the auction held at the official auction had become traceable with certain statistical data. For example, if the initial price of an auctioned item was 100 thousand dollars, its final transaction would not go over a tenfold increase in price, which meant that it would be sold any higher than 1 million dollars.

The buyers were not actual stone gambling players but middlemen who would trade the items later. Once they secured a bid, they would send the item back to Clusia for a second auction. What they earned was only the price difference.

Therefore, should the price of each raw stone exceed their well-thought-out budget, they would never offer a higher price. The jade merchants knew that one could not be winning all the time at stone gambling. The more money a jade merchant was capable of making, the better the merchant would be at having self-control and not delving into stone gambling. They figured they would be winners as long as they refrained from gambling.Nôvel(D)rama.Org's content.

Once they started gambling, their desire to bet would take over and turn them into addicted gamblers. As long as they indulge themselves in gambling, no matter how much fortune they had, they would eventually lose it all.

The quality of those raw jadeites was identified before being tagged with their base auction prices. The lowest among them was 20 million Manchernius dollars while the highest was 150 million Manchernius dollars.

To be honest, the price set by the official auction was actually a fraud. Initially, the price posted by the official auction was already almost 70% of the base value of the jadeite.

After being auctioned, the final transaction price would increase by about five to ten times, which was five to ten times. higher than the typical market price.

Of course, that was only the price in Manchernius. It was considered not that expensive back in Clusia. The prominent stone gambling players there were the crazy ones.”

Oliver carefully looked at the stones every step of the way as he listened to Fabian’s introduction.

Those old mine materials were indeed better than the stones he had seen before. The possibility of finding a jade in the core seemed to increase by 80% to 90%, and almost every piece of them could produce correspondingly different grades of jade.

Oliver calculated the price and estimated the final price with a tenfold increase, and if the jade piece were to be identified to have a value equal to or lower than the estimated final price, he would totally not consider it.

Even if there were some that could bring him a profit of 10% or 20%, he would not buy them. In his opinion, the measly profit was not worth the trouble.

Only when the price was more than 50% of the value, he would consider getting his hands on it.

It was then that Oliver’s eyes lit up when the raw stone numbered 67 came into sight.

The identification message displayed on that raw stone was: [An old mine material from Pillere. The time required for it to form was 110,000,000 years. It was unearthed on December 1st, 2020, weighing 215 pounds in total; the weight of the jade in its inner core was 46 pounds. Two-thirds of the jade core was slightly cracked with a transparency index of 2.0, and one-fifth of the jade core was opaque.]

Oliver then saw a 360-degree high-definition image of the jade core.

[Craftsmanship: Unprocessed.]

[Value assessment: 15.4 million dollars.]

Based on his past experience, Oliver also figured out that the value obtained from the visual identification was the unprocessed jadeite price. That meant if it was processed into a finished product and then reassessed, it could be worth almost double the price.

In conclusion, the final value of the jadeite residing in that particular raw stone should be about 30 million dollars.

Fabian also introduced that the auction base price of the said stone at the official auction was 60 million Manchernius dollars, which was equivalent to about 60,000 dollars.

Even at the maximum premium of tenfold, that stone was only 600 thousand dollars.

“This stone is worth a lot of money!” he mused.

“Gregory, I’d like to have this stone. Let me reserve this!”

Oliver was calm when he made that request to Gregory. Naturally, he would not put his joy on full display.

For crafty fellows like Gregory and Fabian, it did not matter at all. Since everything was hidden inside the stone, no one knew whether the jade would turn out to be good or bad. Even if one had a decent exterior, it might still produce awful jade when cut open 90% of the time.

Moving along, Oliver picked four more stone pieces. Their base price for the auction was about 40,000 dollars, but the jadeite’s value within was more than 2 million dollars.

Be that as it might, he did not come across any he coveted the most.

Out of the 244 pieces of raw stones, they had looked at nearly 200 of them. Yet, Oliver had only chosen five pieces in total.

There were merely more than 40 of them left, so getting one to his liking would not seem probable.

Oliver sighed and continued to go over more than 20 pieces of stones. Alas, not a good piece was found.

Just when Oliver had abandoned all hope, he saw a raw stone the size of a humongous bowl. He froze then and there.