1 Bidding War for Blue-Eyes

"I bid twenty thousand dollars, Damn it! I refuse to believe I can't buy this Blue Eyes White Dragon!"

An angry voice echoed through the estate of the Zhang family. The attendants closest to the scream were momentarily startled out of their routine, before they resumed their working schedule.

It appeared that the third son of Maxwell Zhang, the millionaire oil tycoon, was fighting one of his great bidding wars again.

Although he was almost 20 years old and already begun attending post-secondary education at the nearby Brown University, William still insisted on living at his parent's home instead of buying his own property like his older siblings.

It was not because he was a failure of a child and did not have the wealth to afford such a purchase. After all, even his famous sister and tech-savvy brother had needed a small loan of a hundred thousand dollars from their father when they had been buying their own properties.

No, William simply didn't want his own estate. He still needed to finish his goal of collecting three copies of every first edition Yu-Gi-Oh card in the world. How could he spend his well-earned money on something as boring as a house?

He was almost there too- just last month he had bought several binders off another collector for half a million dollars, rounding out most of his collection of cards.

He was just a single Blue Eyes White Dragon away from accomplishing his dream, but William was stuck at the final gate, blocked by a strange anonymous bidder that seemed to have it out for him.

William angrily glared at his computer screen as the price of the card shot up again- twenty four thousand.

A first edition Blue Eyes is worth only a few thousand dollars, definitely nowhere as much as twenty four thousand American dollars, but William couldn't help it. For the past several weeks, whenever he had tried to buy any first edition copy of the card, this same anonymous bidder, Mr.Empty_Sky8080 would immediately place a higher bid on the market.

The bidding would reach the point where the price far exceeded the expected price of the card, so William would give right at the end to the anonymous bidder, before going to look for other sellers. But this bidder somehow managed to trace, find, and fight William for every single Blue Eyes out on the digital market, to the point where he was starting to lose his mind.

This was the twenty seventh Blue Eyes that the two were fighting over.

Behind William, an old man stood, watching the numbers go higher and higher. The family butler of the Zhang's, Edward Smith sighed. As Maxwell's third son, William had so much potential, but he seemed intent on wasting it away. Although he was not as popular as Elena or as smart as Jonathan, William's money-making schemes were truly terrifying to the old butler.

In grade 5, William bought coke cans from the nearby shops and resold them to classmates, making himself a hefty profit of 230 dollars.

In grade 7, he gathered all the artists in the school and created a miniature fad for origami, creating a miniature association that made him over a thousand dollars by the end of middle school.

In Grade 10, he created a black market for buying soft drugs made himself the "kingpin" of the school, and almost got expelled for getting half of the school addicted to cannabis.

Maxwell had told Edward that he intended William to inherit his oil industry when he graduated from Brown, but Edward could see that William seemed to be much more interested in this children's card game than inheriting his father's business. In the last two years, he even began forgoing his studies in order to travel to so-called "locals" and "tournaments" for this so called "Yu-Gi-Oh" card game.

"What a shame for such a brilliant mind to be corrupted by such a silly children's game," Edward thought as he turned around to gaze at the binders upon binders that decorated the young master's bedroom- binders filled with pieces of cardboard that could have been turned stocks or cars or even houses.

"Indeed," he thought, "what a great waste of a young entrepreneur's youth".

A loud bang from within the room broke Edward out of his contemplation.

"Damn it all, which bastard has so much money to throw around like this? Sixty five thousand dollars?!"

"This is ridiculous!"

William really considered withdrawing from the bidding at this point. Sixty five thousand was already thirty thousand dollars over the last Blue Eyes that they had bid for, and William didn't think that this Mr.Empty_Sky8080 had infinite money to spend on pestering him.

The problem was that he wasn't sure when the next Blue Eyes White Dragon was going to be on sale if he lost this round to the anonymous bidder. Over the last month, the two had pretty much fought over every last Blue Eyes on the online market, and it could be months before another one appeared again.

William looked back at the computer monitor.

"Fine, it seems that I'll have to go all out!" He declared as he inputted the new bid in.

"I want to see if you can still outbid me after this, eat my one hundred thousand dollars, fool!"

Edward, who was standing at the door to William's room, felt his heart jump at his statement. He quickly ran over to the computer screen before looking at the new bid.

"Young Master! Please reconsider!"

William paused and looked up at him.

"You're currently riled up from all the bidding, but please consider whether that single card is really worth that much money!"

"Also," he added, "You only have a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in your bank account at the moment, how are you going to pay for your parent's anniversary gift in two weeks? Your next pay check won't arrive until the following month!"

William thought for a moment and then waved Edward off.

"Look, I'll just sell a bit more of my Amazon stock if I'm low on cash, I've been meaning to sell some of it off anyway."

He nonchalantly replied.

"Besides, I earned all this money myself, and also, Elena spent like, half a million on beauty cosmetics last year, so I think I can also indulge myself every once in a while Edward."

William moved to input his new bid in when suddenly his computer let out a ring. In the message function of the website there was a new private message sent to him.

Mr.Empty_Sky8080:

*Are you sure you want to keep bidding?*

*I would advise against it.*