50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 807 Commission
The sheer number of gold artifacts piled together created a powerful visual impact, leaving everyone with nothing but greedy desire to possess them.

Sun Zhiwei's soft chuckle startled the appraisers who were mesmerized by the gold treasure.

"This container contained nearly a thousand pieces of gold jewelry, but their value obviously cannot be measured solely by the weight of the gold."

Then, Sun Zhiwei walked to the pile of treasures, picked up a necklace at random, and said:

"For example, this necklace of an ancient Indian chieftain has a gold frame and is inlaid with hundreds of diamonds over 1 carat each. Even without considering its art and antique value, its estimated price would not be low."

There's also this Sarpech headdress from the Mughal dynasty, which Cartier made for Digvisión Bárcena and is called the Tiger Eye Sarpech.

This extravagant headdress is adorned with numerous square and round diamonds, especially the largest yellow diamond in the center, which is priceless.

"There are 40 containers in this warehouse, and there are many other jewelry items similar to these two necklaces and headdresses. Their value will have to wait for your appraisers to determine."

Christie's manager, seeing the container piled high with gold and jewelry, knew this was going to be a big deal.

He immediately took out his phone with excitement and began to call someone to report.

Christie's senior management took the manager's report very seriously and immediately began recruiting.

A dozen minutes later, the first batch of reinforcements arrived. They were a Christie's security team of more than 40 fully armed personnel who came in several armored vehicles.

At this moment, the opened container has been closed again, and Sun Zhiwei and Christie's six-person team are waiting at the warehouse entrance.

After the security personnel arrived, the manager, fearing that Sun Zhiwei might misunderstand, quickly explained to him, "This is our company's security force. From now on, they will guard the entire warehouse for you. Of course, this is free of charge."

Sun Zhiwei had no misunderstanding and was not afraid of them turning against him.

He was no nobody; although he had no one with him, he was not the only one who knew about this treasure.

The more people who know, the lower the probability of an accident happening at Christie's.

Moreover, he had already decided to entrust them with the full handling of this treasure, from which Christie's would receive a large amount of legitimate profits, so there was no need to take the huge risks of engaging in illegal transactions.

So, after hearing the manager's words, he casually nodded and agreed to the security measures that the security team would take.

After receiving authorization, Christie's security team began deploying security inside and outside the warehouse.

A large number of advanced cameras were installed around the warehouse, and 24-hour patrols were immediately launched. They even brought two police dogs off an armored vehicle, demonstrating their professionalism.

Seeing those police dogs, Sun Zhiwei had an idea. He thought that his Pinkerton Security Company could learn this trick.

In complex environments such as cities, a professional police dog is sometimes more reliable than a squad of soldiers.

However, his failure to arrange guards at the warehouse in advance was indeed a mistake.

It's not surprising that he forgot this rule, because after he rented the warehouse, he didn't put anything in it at all; the temple's treasures were all in his personal space.

It was only now, seeing Christie's security team arrive, that he remembered this matter. He wasn't short-handed on Hong Kong Island; ever since he found shipping companies like the shipping magnate through Mr. Fok and signed escort agreements, his Pinkerton company had a small team of more than 20 people permanently stationed on Hong Kong Island.

This small team simply doesn't have a gun license on Hong Kong Island, unlike Christie's security team, which has such a strong armed force.

So he took out a mobile phone from his bag, ready to call over a group of his men to serve him.

Half an hour later, the Pinkerton team arrived.

They looked more like an army, marching in neat formations. Although they were unarmed, their strength in unarmed combat was not to be underestimated.

Arriving at the same time as them were Christie's first batch of jewelry and antique appraisers, a total of eight people, accompanied by Fran Smith, the general manager of Christie's Asia branch.

After they arrived, Sun Zhiwei opened the container that he had just opened.

The thousands of pieces of jewelry in this one container alone are enough to keep them busy, so there's no rush to open the other containers.

However, he did give the keys to the other containers to the head of the Pinkerton team for safekeeping; he couldn't possibly stay here and watch over these things himself.

General Manager Fran Smith then struck up a conversation with Sun Zhiwei: "Mr. James, you can rest assured that you can entrust this treasure to us. Our company is professional."

Sun Zhiwei nodded and said, "I believe that, otherwise I wouldn't have come directly to your company."

"Let's go back to the hotel and discuss the agency agreement. Your agency fee is quite high."

“Mr. James, now that you’ve come to us, you should know that we have preferential policies for large clients like you. We’ll need to discuss that in more detail later.”

As Sun Zhiwei walked out, he instructed the head of the Pinkerton team: "You are responsible for guarding these containers. Once they have completed the inspection of one container, open the next one for them."

While he was waiting, he had already put all the temple jewels into the containers in the warehouse, filling all 40 containers.

He didn't completely ignore it after that. The Peninsula Hotel where he was staying was only a few hundred meters away from the warehouse as the crow flies. From the hotel, he could completely cover the entire warehouse within his spatial range.

Under the surveillance of the space, nothing could escape his detection; the Pinkerton squad was merely a figurehead.

Afterwards, Sun Zhiwei took Christie's branch manager back to their room at the Peninsula Hotel.

After a brief discussion, Sun Zhiwei obtained a 3% discount from them.

This figure is approximately 15% of the auction price. Considering the large number of items involved, Christie's will likely need to send hundreds of appraisers to work day and night for more than half a month.

Sun Zhiwei didn't argue further and signed the agency agreement based on 15% of the total fee.

In one afternoon, the first batch of eight appraisers did a basic classification of the items in the first container, roughly dividing them into three parts.

These include gold and diamond jewelry (including ornaments and crowns of ancient Indian kings), Buddhist items (including the golden elephant weighing over ten tons and other utensils), and foreign goods (including gold coins circulating around the world at that time).

(End of this chapter)