The Great Depression (Part Twelve)

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."