Year: I had a good time when I was young

Chapter 854: Guarding and Stealing
In horse racing competitions, many horses do not have good physical strength, but there are examples where they win the championship because the riders are experienced and know how to allocate the horses' physical strength.

So if Chu Xiangqian was McDonald, he would grit his teeth and try his luck when he had the chance to participate in the Triple Crown competition.

Even if you only win one championship, it is a great honor.

Of course, a horse that wins two championships is actually the best among all the participating horses in the same year.

The probability of winning another championship is very high.

No horse owner would give up unless the horse was at risk of injury.

McDonald was very excited, and he was also very happy to pay the agreed reward, which was 14 rare antiques from the Celestial Empire.

He also spent the whole afternoon talking to Chu Xiangqian about how to train the purebred horse with an agility of 1.7 meters, and he gave Chu Xiangqian two large official kiln vases from the third dynasty of the Qing Dynasty as consulting fees.

As a result, the news that Chu Xiangqian liked Chinese antiques soon spread in England.

Moreover, his act of helping others to look after the horses this time also made many nobles and powerful people eager to make a move.

This made Norton sulky for several days.

Nord, his grandfather Mountbatten, and Chu Xiangqian have been doing antique business for more than four years.

Very few people knew about this before. It can even be said that only a few families that had business dealings with Chu Xiangqian knew about it.

Moreover, these families have tacitly kept this secret to prevent anyone from competing with them for profits and artificially raising the prices of Chinese antiques.

Although many Chinese antiques have been collected in recent years, the difficulty of collecting has not changed much, because outsiders do not know the benefits involved.

Every year when Chu Xiangqian came to London, he would do some business with the Norton and Cavendish families.

However, antiques from the Celestial Empire are indeed not valuable in this era. Even though Chu Xiangqian bought so many antiques through Norton, the price of antiques from the Celestial Empire has only increased by 10% or 20% in the past few years.

Of course, this is because Norton has been purchasing in secret, and the trading partners are not just the British. France and Spain have also purchased a lot, which has suppressed the price increase trend.

If the price increases significantly that year, Chu Xiangqian will discuss with Norton to reduce the purchase quantity.

However, no matter how much the prices are lowered, the price increase of mid- and low-end Chinese antiques is indeed not much, but those rare pieces are few in number and their prices cannot be kept down.

Those merchants engaged in the antique business are not fools. After a few years, it is impossible for them not to know that there are people in the market and in the aristocratic circles who are constantly purchasing antiques from the Celestial Empire.

Some people have already started stockpiling small quantities of fine products, waiting for prices to go up.

In the past year or so, Norton's attention has basically been focused on those fallen nobles.

Among these people, firstly, they have no money, and secondly, many of them do not care about Chinese antiques at all, nor do they know the value of these antiques.

If you are lucky, the antiques that cost 1 yuan when sold to Chu Xiangqian may only cost 1 yuan, or even three or five hundred yuan, when purchased from these nobles.

What made Chu Xiangqian and Norton feel regretful was that even though many antiques were hidden in the treasury of the castle, no one had taken care of or repaired them for decades, and many of them were damaged.

This is just like the collectors in Beijing who don’t care about antiques from the Republic of China and the late Qing Dynasty at all at this time. Because of their low value, no one cares about them.

At the same time, most of the owners of antiques do not realize the value of antiques at all.

Since Norton reduced his collection of antiques and wanted to exchange $150 million worth of antiques for the chestnut Ferghana horse, he had basically cleared out all the antiques he had collected in the past year.

The quantity should be at least several hundred pieces.

Of course, if each piece was a rare or unique piece worth thousands or even tens of thousands of pounds, Chu Xiangqian would naturally want as many as possible.

Unfortunately, Norton himself is not stupid. He only trades 10% of the treasures at most each time, and the rest are from this era and can only be considered good antiques.

But after several decades, these fine antiques would cost at least tens or millions of Chinese Yuan.

Therefore, Chu Xiangqian's attitude towards Chinese antiques is basically, as long as they are authentic, he will take them.

However, what Chu Xiangqian did not expect was that he agreed to Norton's request, handed over the antiques to him the next day, and sent away the chestnut horse.

That afternoon, Philip came alone, took Chu Xiangqian on horseback, took a hunting rifle, and brought a dozen hunting dogs to go hunting.

With Chu Xiangqian's marksmanship, he could hit small animals like hares, colorful chickens, quails, etc., just by pointing at them.

In less than an hour, two hares, a dozen quails and a colorful chicken became prey.

Philip couldn't help but sigh at Chu Xiangqian's marksmanship, and even joked that he might as well sign up for the air rifle competition when he accompanied Margaret to Tokyo to participate in the Olympics this year.

If I win the championship in the same class as Margaret, I will have something to brag about in front of my children in the future.

You know what, these words really made Chu Xiangqian feel a little moved.

However, if I really participate in the competition, I will definitely not represent Ying Country.

Hong Kong Island joined the Olympic-related organizations in 52 and became one of the members, eligible to participate in the Olympics in the name of Hong Kong Island.

Therefore, Chu Xiangqian must be participating in the competition as a player from Hong Kong Island.

But there is no rush for this matter, and the operation can be directly handed over to Hader.

If he really won the championship, Chu Xiangqian thought carefully and felt that he would be the first person in Hong Kong to win the championship.

This is bound to go down in local history.

Philips couldn't help but laugh when he saw that Chu Xiangqian really had this idea.

Then, while Chu Xiangqian was in a good mood, he whispered, "Stark, someone asked me to bring you a message. They want to exchange the antiques from the Celestial Empire for the Ferghana horse you brought back this time, just like Norton did."

Chu Xiangqian was stunned, and his first thought was that this was exactly why this guy came to see him.

After thinking for a few seconds, I felt that not only could this business be done, but it could also be treated as a long-term investment, and I could exchange as much as I could get.

First of all, to him, the Ferghana horse was just a horse refreshed in the novice village.

Moreover, in recent years, both the foals bred and domesticated in his own small ranch, and the foals bred by his card-playing friends like Hader, have proven this.

The offspring of horses produced by the game actually follow the rule that 9.9% are ordinary, and the remaining 1% are good horses.

Even the upgraded Champion Knight and Black Horse did not show any abnormalities in their offspring.

Therefore, Chu Xiangqian cared less and less about who he finally sold the horse he took out from the Novice Village to.

When Philip saw that Chu Xiangqian agreed, his face lit up with joy and he hurried away with his men.

But Margaret was not happy.

This girl has already treated these 15 Arabian horses as her own property, or in other words, as gifts for her unborn baby after it is born.

So how could he be happy about Chu Xiangqian's continuous selling of horses?

She even wondered in her heart whether Chu Xiangqian no longer loved her and her children.

Pregnant women have endocrine disorders, so it is normal for them to have wild thoughts.

Chu Xiangqian didn't argue with her, and he didn't lack good horses. He rolled his eyes and came up with an idea. He hugged the sulking Margaret and said nonsense, "Dear, I will have someone bring a few more discarded horses over as soon as possible.

The appearance of those horses is similar to the 16 horses this time, but their overall strength is a little bit different, and ordinary people can't see it at all."

Margaret understood as soon as she heard it. Her husband was selling a second-rate horse at the price of a good horse.

A smile soon appeared on his face.

But after a while, she started to worry again, fearing that this incident would ruin her man's reputation.

Chu Xiangqian laughed and calmed Margaret's emotions, but he was thinking in his heart that it should be easy to exchange a few horses for millions of dollars of Chinese antiques. After a few decades, these antiques should be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Only a fool wouldn't do this business.

Moreover, antiques are more valuable than gold in prosperous times. A few Arabian horses will be out of their prime in seven or eight years at most.

Then he becomes a stud, but he will be useless after ten or twenty years.

As for breeding the herd, since so many Arabian horses have been sold, they don't care about selling a few more.

The next morning, Philip arrived at the manor with three carts of antiques.

He asked people to open the 30 boxes one by one. When counting them, Chu Xiangqian quickly saw a large bronze tripod.

After just a few glances, I was shocked by this bronze tripod.

If I remember correctly, I saw this bronze tripod in the warehouse of the Vittoria and Albert Museum through Tit three years ago.

After walking forward to identify it again and again, Chu Xiangqian suppressed the shock in his heart and looked calmly at another wooden box. Sure enough, there were two more bronze artifacts that he had seen before.

Finally, after all 30 boxes brought by the last three small trucks were opened, Chu Xiangqian discovered more than a dozen pieces of porcelain and jade that also left an impression on him.

In other words, a small part or even all of the 73 treasures that Philips brought were probably stolen from the museum.

In theory, as long as the thing is real, Chu Xiangqian doesn't need to care so much.

Philips and the people behind him should also be encouraged to steal more Chinese antiques from museums.

But there is a problem here. If the museum has records of these antiques, it will be difficult for me to put them up for public auction in the future and make money from future domestic tycoons.

Similarly, if you open a museum, you cannot exhibit these things.

So Chu Xiangqian pulled Philip aside and asked in a low voice, "Are you sure there's nothing wrong with those bronze artifacts?"

Philip had always had a sneaky idea in his mind, and his face tightened when he heard this.

Chu Xiangqian also confirmed his guess through Philip's flickering eyes.

Philip suppressed his anxiety, and thought quickly after calming down.

The museum business actually began during World War II.

By the end of World War II, thefts became more frequent.

So Philips quickly concluded that Chu Xiangqian could not possibly know the source of these antiques.

He smiled and whispered back, "Don't worry, I promise these things are fine."

After saying that, he added jokingly, "Even if you take it to an auction house tomorrow, I guarantee no one will cause trouble for you."

Chu Xiangqian didn't believe this so easily, but on second thought, the media of Ying Country had reported that even the Daying Museum had lost at least hundreds of thousands of antiques over the past few decades.

This may be an exaggeration, but it is also possible that the number of antiques actually stolen far exceeds hundreds of thousands.

Moreover, it is not difficult for an insider to erase the records of manually registered information.

So Chu Xiangqian thought about it and decided not to care whether what Philips said was true or not. Now that he had his eyes on the thing, there was no way he could return it.

After looking at the 73 treasures again and making sure that he had not made any mistakes, Chu Xiangqian began to work.

Sure enough, the sound of gold coupons rang continuously in his mind, and it sounded so wonderful to Chu Xiangqian at this moment.

And he didn't make any mistakes in any of them, which made Chu Xiangqian feel a little proud.

With my current vision and experience, I can definitely be considered an authority in identifying Chinese antiques.

When Chu Xiangqian had the antiques loaded onto a truck and sent to the small ranch next door, Philip followed them and took away a pure black Ferghana horse that he had previously set his eyes on from the remaining 15 Ferghana horses.

After the horse was led to the RV specially used for transporting horses, Philip happily put his arm around Chu Xiangqian's shoulders and said, "Stark, shall we trade again in a few days?"

"No problem," Chu Xiangqian agreed without hesitation this time.

A few days later, Chu Xiangqian was leading the newly formed training team and watching Alice training on a chestnut Arabian horse in the newly built show jumping training ground.

The little girl was indeed as talented as her aunt Margaret had said, with a great talent for riding horses.

It only took two days to become familiar with this chestnut Arabian horse.

After only two days of training, I was already quite proficient in riding a horse and jumping over hurdles.

But winning the championship is not that easy.

The morning passed and before lunch was even had, Philip came to the door again.

Pulling Chu forward, he muttered, “This time it’s also an antique worth $150 million, but I’ll have someone drive it directly to your pony farm.

So that we don’t have to move around again.”

Chu Xiangqian nodded. If the 150 million antiques from last time had not been kept in the treasury of the horse farm next door, it would have been difficult for him to put all of these things into the Novice Village warehouse.

So Chu Xiangqian didn't bother talking to Philip. He took him to the next door and let him choose the horse and take it away.

When Chu Xiangqian returned to the manor, Margaret immediately came over and asked in a low voice, "Honey, which horse did Philip choose?"

Chu Xiangqian laughed, and it turned out that Philip did not choose from the 14 horses used for the competition.

Instead, he followed the advice of a royal adviser and chose a three-year-old horse bred at a stable.

Chu Xiangqian originally thought that the royal advisor should be of good quality, but it turned out that the horse that was chosen was actually very ordinary.

Chu Xiangqian didn't understand why they didn't choose a tall horse but had to choose the three-year-old horse whose shoulder height was only a little over 1 meters.

It can be seen that among consultants and experts, there are very few who have real abilities.

Chu Xiangqian personally delivered the antique boxes that were transported this time into the treasury one by one. After making sure that the items were correct, he put them all into the Novice Village warehouse.

Then he selected a lot of antiques with +1 gold coupons that he had collected in the capital that year and put them back into wooden boxes.

(End of this chapter)