From Robinson Crusoe

Chapter 270 Gold
The stairwells of old residential buildings are dimly lit, and motion-activated lights require heavy footsteps to turn on.

The paint on the walls looked grayish from age, and every door was covered with a layer of small, unsightly advertisements.

Chen Zhou carried large and small bags, looked up at the stairs, and climbed up each floor.

Although his body experienced abnormalities after returning to the modern world, his overall physical condition was significantly improved compared to before participating in the challenge.

In addition to his superhuman hearing and sense of smell, his endurance and strength have also increased significantly, and he has even made progress in flexibility and coordination.

Normally, climbing six flights of stairs in one go would make one feel a little tired, but this time, carrying a lot of things to his doorstep, Chen Zhou didn't even pant and didn't feel tired at all.

……

Looking at the door he hadn't seen for so long, Chen Zhou put down the things he was holding and hesitated before gently knocking three times.

Not long after, hurried footsteps came from behind the iron gate, and with the click of the lock, Chen Zhou's mother opened the door.

"Why are you back?"

Zhao Chunfang was a little surprised to see that it was her son knocking on the door.

She glanced at the large and small bags Chen Zhou had placed on the ground, as well as the suitcase he had taken to work. She also looked at Chen Zhou's expression and vaguely felt that something must have happened when her son came back.

In Zhao Chunfang's eyes, Chen Zhou had only been away from home for a little over a month, and just two days ago he had a video call with her and talked about things at the factory.

Little did she know that in just a few days, Chen Zhou had undergone a complete transformation.

Faced with his mother's question, Chen Zhou was unsure whether to answer truthfully. He simply picked up his package and walked into the house, asking questions as he went.

"Mom, where is my dad?"

"Change into slippers first."

Seeing Chen Zhou head straight for the living room, Zhao Chunfang quickly reminded him, and then muttered to herself.

"Didn't I tell you last week that your dad took a job building walls in the pastoral area? He probably won't be back for a few more days."

"So you're home alone and haven't cooked?"

After placing the package at the door, changing into slippers, and walking into the dining room, Chen Zhou saw the pickled vegetables and cold rice on the table and asked...

"If you're alone and don't really want anything to eat, you can just make do with whatever you have."

You haven't told me yet, why are you back? You took another day off? What are you carrying all this stuff for? Is the washing machine at work broken?

Based on a mother's intuition, Zhao Chunfang felt that her son was deliberately hiding something from her. In addition, Chen Zhou's return today was very sudden, so she couldn't help but ask again.

"Mom, I quit my job. I'm not working at the cement factory anymore."

Chen Zhou could no longer hide it and directly revealed his resignation.

Upon hearing this, Zhao Chunfang intended to reprimand her son, but seeing Chen Zhou's low spirits, her words took a different turn.

"Did you suffer some mistreatment at the factory again?"
It's okay if you don't want to do it anymore. Now that things are more relaxed, Mom thinks it's better for you to develop your career in the south. Young people should go out and explore. If you're really tired, just rest at home.

"By the way, have you eaten? What do you want to eat? Mom will make it for you."

"Mom, I'm not hungry. You should rest if you're tired. I'll pack my things."

Having lived without relatives or elders for 28 years, Chen Zhou seemed very uncomfortable with his mother's concern.

If judged by the number of days he has lived, his psychological age even surpasses that of his mother. This strange difference makes him subconsciously want to be alone and rediscover the feeling of home.

"Okay, if you get hungry, just call me. There are still ribs in the freezer, I just bought them the day before yesterday."

As she spoke, Zhao Chunfang turned on the living room light and went back to her bedroom, leaving Chen Zhou standing in the room, staring blankly at the wall displaying the certificates of honor.

……

The past is worth remembering because time cannot be turned back.

Compared to life on a deserted island, modern life always seems exceptionally dull and monotonous, as bland as plain water. But for Chen Zhou, this past also has its unique charm.

……

That evening, Chen Zhou ate two ice creams.

During the dry season on the island, he often craved modern, flavorful ice cream and popsicles. When he got home, he wanted to eat more, but after only two, he found them too sweet and cloying and lost his appetite.

He then took out all his luggage, neatly stacked it in the wardrobe in the room, and arranged the paintings one by one on the desk before lying down on the bed to think about how to deal with the precious metals.

Thousands of kilograms of gold and silver, along with jewelry and handicrafts, certainly cannot be sold all at once.

Not to mention that a large influx of precious metals would impact the market and affect prices.

Even if it doesn't affect the market, few people would be able to swallow this treasure worth hundreds of millions in one go.

Even if someone could handle it, they would be someone he couldn't get close to.

You have to understand, he's not some rich young master, he's just an ordinary person. Anyone who buys his goods will always have to worry about whether the source is legitimate.

Fortunately, in modern society, while large amounts of gold are difficult to liquidate, there are quite a few channels to liquidate smaller amounts of gold.

The gold market is currently booming, and news reports have featured stories of older women using their retirement savings to buy large amounts of gold for investment.

This has made the gold market even more popular, and investing in precious metals has gradually become a common practice for ordinary people.

Besides banks, professional gold recycling companies, branded gold shops, and even pawnshops, there is a new type of gold exchange called smart gold shops, also known as gold ATMs, which can quickly convert small amounts of gold into cash.

After returning to the modern world, Chen Zhou gradually adapts to his physical functions and integrates into modern society.

He still remembers how important mobile phones are in modern society; if there's something he can't remember or doesn't understand, he'll use his phone to search for it first.

By searching on various platforms, Chen Zhou quickly found several online gold recycling companies that seemed relatively reliable.

Banks require that the gold be free of scratches and wear when repurchasing it, and also require proof of purchase, such as invoices, certificates, and packaging.

According to the information Chen Zhou found online, banks require customers to go to designated branches to buy back gold and make an appointment in advance. The bank will repurchase the gold based on the international gold price of the day, deducting a handling fee of 2% to 5%.

Among all channels for gold buyback, banks are the safest and most reliable, with transparent pricing that closely matches real-time gold prices.

Unfortunately, the goods Chen Zhou had were all "shady" items, and their purity was probably hard to reach Au99.99. Not to mention that their shape was completely different from the gold bars and jewelry sold by banks, so this avenue for monetization was clearly blocked.

Aside from banks, most people liquidate their gold through professional gold recycling companies.

These companies buy back gold regardless of brand or type, and their prices are based on real-time gold prices. According to their descriptions, they are similar to banks in terms of gold recycling.

However, they are not banks after all. Even if they are legitimate and qualified, problems such as undercutting prices or falsely reporting losses can still occur when recycling gold.

Since the seller has no proof of ownership for the gold, the recycling company will conduct destructive testing on the gold to confirm its purity, which will inevitably result in losses.

The seller is responsible for this loss.

Since gold is measured in grams, exaggerating the loss during gold testing can earn thousands of dollars more. Faced with such a huge profit, how many people can resist the temptation to be greedy?
As for offline gold shops recycling gold, they actually lose more money than gold recycling companies. Apart from investment gold bars issued by branded gold shops that can be recycled at the real-time gold price, gold shops generally deduct losses and labor fees when recycling gold. On top of the losses incurred by gold recycling companies, an additional labor fee is added, so the cash value will definitely be less.

As for pawnshops, they lose the most money.

Its price is only about 70% or 80% of the real-time gold price, which means that gold worth 1000 yuan per gram can only be sold for 700 or 800 yuan per gram at a pawn shop.

Aside from the speed of converting cash into cash and the ease of selling, pawnshops have no advantages whatsoever.

The gold ATM was a novelty that Chen Zhou had never heard of before.

It is only found in international shopping plazas in a few major cities. It looks similar to an ATM and offers both smart gold recycling and self-service gold purchase services.

According to the information Chen Zhou found, a gold ATM can only accept up to 1000 grams of gold at a time.

Simply enter your personal information into the machine, then open the recycling compartment and put in the gold. You can then watch the gold melting and testing process in real time through a glass screen in a transparent testing room.

Gold products can be recycled as long as they meet the requirement of having a gold content of more than 50%.

Once the transaction is confirmed and the receiving account is entered, the seller will receive the payment.

If we compare the speed of cash conversion, the speed of gold ATM is even better than that of pawnshops, and the fully intelligent, unmanned processing is also quite convenient.

In terms of transaction fees, the gold ATM charges 18 yuan per gram of gold, which is not cheap, but it is not unacceptable for Chen Zhou, a wealthy man who "possesses a mountain of gold".

……

The gold recycling companies Chen Zhou found online all supported both offline and door-to-door recycling. The nearest station was 300 kilometers away from Balin Town, which could be reached by bus in about four hours.

With 28 days left before the expiration of his private storage space lease, he needed to find a safe and secluded place as soon as possible to retrieve and properly store all his valuables before slowly selling them.

Chen Zhou already had a suitable choice in mind regarding the best place to store his valuables.

There is an abandoned factory building on the outer ring of Nanxin Street in the small town. It is located in a remote area and is a reinforced concrete structure with three floors above ground and one floor below ground.

This factory was used to produce wine in earlier years. Later, the winery went bankrupt and the factory was taken over by the government. Since no one was willing to take it over, it has remained in the hands of the government ever since.

The factory is surrounded by a high wall with barbed wire.

The factory had two gates, one at the front and one at the back. The back gate was smaller, only allowing one vehicle to pass through at a time, while the front gate was wide and made of iron. It had collapsed due to years of neglect.

Chen Zhou and his classmates secretly sneaked into an abandoned building to play during summer vacation when he was in junior high school.

He was impressed by the underground cellar where the factory stored its wines.

Its interior was pitch black and interconnected, resembling a small air-raid shelter.

Several separate rooms were set up deep inside the cave, with thick iron gates installed at the entrances of the rooms. The gates were surrounded by thick concrete walls, making them ideal for storage rooms.

Chen Zhou wanted to buy the factory, clean up the garbage, do some simple renovations to the small building, connect the power and network cables, install surveillance cameras, and then place two rows of safes in a separate underground room to store the gold.

The factory's spacious courtyard is just the right size to keep a few dogs and grow a vegetable garden, allowing the dogs to guard the house while also achieving self-sufficiency.

Buying an abandoned factory and renovating it may seem like a grand undertaking, but with 24-hour surveillance and dogs, it's safer than just burying it in some random ditch.

Bahrain is not a big city, but a small town located in the northern inland.

The abandoned factory was an inconspicuous corner of the town. Whatever happened under this unnoticed little building would go unnoticed as long as he kept quiet.

Besides safety considerations, the factory has another attractive advantage: a 70-year land use right. This condition was probably added by the government because they saw that the factory was really hard to sell.

However, due to its poor location, the lack of value of the old building, and the need to spend money to demolish it, developers had more options if they only wanted to buy land. For many years, the factory remained unattended.

Chen Zhou had seen the government's published terms for the sale of the factory. Although the government offered a price as high as 460 million, considering the overall area of ​​the factory and the term of use, it was still a good deal for him.

After all, he bought the factory not to make a profit, but simply to find a safe place to store his belongings and live alone away from people.

……

However, while the factory was excellent, it was somewhat difficult for Chen Zhou to handle at the moment.

After a simple calculation, he estimated that he would need at least 1200 million yuan in cash to support his purchase of the factory, subsequent repairs and renovations, and the purchase of safes.

This amount of money is far too conspicuous for the account of an ordinary person like him.

According to the information Chen Zhou consulted, short-term scattered inflows and concentrated outflows of funds, or sudden large-scale fund flows in idle accounts, and transaction patterns such as fund flows that are inconsistent with the cardholder's occupation and business scale, will trigger the bank's risk control system and freeze the account.

Then the anti-money laundering department will intervene, and the public security organs and tax authorities will also launch a joint investigation.

The basic assessment of this huge sum of money started from 200,000. If he sold a large amount of gold at once and transferred hundreds of thousands of yuan into his bank account, he would be investigated 100%.

With this concern, although Chen Zhou was reluctant to store the gold and silver elsewhere, he could only make do for a while, buying a small house or warehouse to store them, and making other plans once he had a way to conceal it from others.

Otherwise, abnormal income amounting to millions or tens of millions of yuan would definitely trigger the bank's risk control and anti-money laundering detection.

If he comes under the police's scrutiny, even if he has a silver tongue, he probably won't be able to explain where all that gold and silver came from.

Chen Zhou also wanted to be cautious about the money for buying small houses or warehouses, and try to get buyers to use cash transactions.

Offline gold brand stores or gold ATMs certainly do not support large cash transactions. Selling large amounts of gold in stores with close ties to banks and the police would also cause unnecessary trouble, so Chen Zhou rejected the idea first.

After much deliberation, he came up with three possible solutions—

Pawnshops, gold recycling companies, and antique shops.

Antique shops represent a unique approach.

Chen Zhou didn't know if the large batch of European gold and silver coins he had, dating back to the 17th century and minted using medieval techniques but untouched by time, would be favored by Chinese antique enthusiasts, but he wanted to give it a try.

If he could sell some of his gold and silver coins through this channel and get a few hundred thousand in cash, he would have his first start-up capital and could then look for a more suitable way to secure his treasure.

……

Chen Zhou studied how to monetize gold until the early hours of the morning, and only when dawn broke did he finally drift off to sleep, filled with hope for the future.

Before going to bed, he took out four James I gold coins, ten one-shilling silver coins, and two gold bars he had melted and cast himself, weighing about 500 grams, and bought a train ticket to the city.

He wanted to visit the gold recycling companies in the city to see what the specific market conditions and procedures were like.

While we're at it, let's also find out what the antique shop owner thinks, and see if we can find another way.

If gold can be sold at antique prices, not only can more money be made, but it can also be monetized in a way that is less likely to attract attention.

The antique market itself is a gray area, especially the ancient coin business.

Almost no one who collects coins can explain whether the ancient coins they possess were obtained by digging up graves or passed down through generations.

If the police were to take these people seriously, the entire antique industry might not be able to continue developing.

(End of this chapter)