50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 330 The Veteran's Treasure

As Sun Zhiwei drank, he listened to old Lancaster tell his fake love story.

"Later, when I was leaving the base to go to the peninsula, I was prepared to take Mamiko with me, but she couldn't bear to leave her family, so we had to say goodbye."

"Before she left, she gave me that bronze statue, and I left her all my allowance for that month. After that, we lost contact."

It seems that Mamiko's ancestors participated in the Eight Women's Allied Army, but they probably perished during World War II, otherwise her family wouldn't have been so poor.

Moreover, she sold the bronze statue for a good price. During World War II, American soldiers earned very high salaries; this Mamiko really knew how to do business.

Now that the bronze statue was in his hands, wasn't this awkward? He quickly said to old Lancaster:
"So those were your memories. In that case, it wouldn't be right for me to keep them. I'll send them to you when I get back."

"No need for that. Mamiko has always been in my heart and cannot be replaced by an object. Since you've already spent money to buy her, you can keep her."

Judging from old Lancaster's nonchalant attitude, it's clear that he didn't love that Mamiko at all; it was just lust at first sight.

Since old Lancaster wouldn't accept it, he wouldn't rush to send it over either; $900 is still money, isn't it?

The two chatted for a while until it was time for dinner, and Sun Zhiwei stayed at Old Lancaster's house.

The next morning, old Lancaster finally led him to the basement.

The basement is larger than the building's surface area and is divided into more than a dozen rooms.

The two rooms at the entrance contained weapons and ammunition, while the dozen or so rooms behind were filled with old Lancaster's spoils of war.

Old Lancaster first showed him around, and Sun Zhiwei only understood why Little Milan said the number of items to be identified was a bit large when he saw the quantity.

The spoils here are different from those in museums. Museums only look at the value of antiques; some have research value, and some have collection value. As long as the value is high, they will collect it.

But old Lancaster didn't know much about antiques. His trophies were characterized by two main features: they were beautiful and small in size.

Although these dozen or so rooms are not large, they contain a lot of things. Each room has several wooden shelves, which are almost completely filled.

He estimated that each room contained at least a thousand items, and the total number of loot in all the rooms exceeded 20,000.

However, most of these items don't qualify as antiques, and while Sun Zhiwei wants to make money, he can't just do things against his conscience.

He said sincerely to old Lancaster, "Som, I've looked at your things roughly, and many of them are ordinary items, not antiques."

"I won't charge you for these obvious ones."

"Of the remaining items, I will mark out the antiques worth more than $500 for you."

Old Lancaster thought for a moment and said, "Let's use $1000 as the standard. Please mark anything over $1000 for me, and leave the rest as is."

"Okay, then I'll use this method to authenticate it for you. Now I need some cardstock to write down the annotations."

"This is in the office. Please wait a moment, and I'll go get it for you."

After saying that, old Lancaster left without looking back, leaving Sun Zhiwei alone in the basement, not even worried that he would steal a few things.

Once Sun Zhiwei was certain that old Lancaster had gone far away, he opened his spatial storage and put all the collections in the room inside.

After reviewing the spatial appraisal results of the valuable items, he put everything back in its original place.

When old Lancaster returned to the basement with the card, Sun Zhiwei had already memorized all the test results.

After that, things were simple. Based on the spatial appraisal results, Sun Zhiwei began to fill in labels for the various items in the basement. These were all chargeable, so the labels were more detailed than those for the items on display in his shop, including four items: name, region, era, and estimated price.

He could confidently say that there were no problems with the first three items, but he couldn't guarantee the price of the last one.

So he wrote two valuations: one for the current price and one for the potential for appreciation.

Finally, of the tens of thousands of items in the Old Lancaster’s collection, more than 5000 were labeled.

The more valuable items were mostly spoils of war from the European and Japanese wars.

Among the spoils from Europe, the most valuable were oil paintings and gold and silver artifacts.

The most valuable item currently is a 17th-century violin made by the Italian master luthier Antonio Stradivarius, which is worth no less than $500,000 and has the potential to appreciate tenfold.

The one with the greatest potential is a Van Gogh painting, currently priced at $5, with the potential to appreciate a thousandfold.

Among the spoils of war from the Japanese invasion, the most valuable items were antiques from China.

The most valuable item currently is a Qianlong jade seal, priced at $10, with the potential to appreciate a hundredfold.

The bronze ram head has the greatest theoretical potential, currently priced at $8000, with a potential for appreciation of a thousandfold.

Of course, he's not stupid; there are some things he wants that he can't label according to the actual situation.

He labeled the ram's head as: incomplete, currently priced at $3000, with a tenfold potential for appreciation.

Emperor Qianlong did not tamper with the imperial seals. He used dozens of imperial seals throughout his life, which were scattered all over the world, so it is not unusual.

It is only because it is the seal of the emperor of a great power that it is sought after by many Westerners. Let's keep it for old Lancaster.

Because of the large number of items in the collection, Sun Zhiwei had to make a phone call back to the store the following afternoon.

He told Belinda that he would be staying in New York for a few more days and gave her the phone number for Old Lancaster so that she could contact him.

Although he had space and didn't need to repeat the identification process, it still took him a week just to write more than 5000 labels.

At first, old Lancaster would come to check on things, but later he stopped coming altogether.

He had kept these things hidden for decades and was already tired of seeing them. In the last few days, Sun Zhiwei could only see old Lancaster during meals.

It wasn't until a week later, when he had finally finished labeling all the high-value items, that old Lancaster went down to the basement with him.

"Som, this is my work for the week: 5109 antiques, each currently valued at over $1000, with a total value exceeding $200 million."

"Congratulations, you are now a real billionaire."

Old Lancaster was stunned when he heard the final total price.

He never imagined that the miscellaneous items he had brought back from his years in the army would be worth so much money, several times more than all his current assets combined.

This was truly an unexpected windfall. After hearing Xiao Milan's description, he felt that his collection should be somewhat valuable, which was why he invited Sun Zhiwei to come and appraise it.

But its ultimate value far exceeded his expectations.

(End of this chapter)