There is a term in the antique industry called "picking up leaks", that is, the real antiques are found in a group of small vendors, and they are bought at a relatively low price and sold at a high price, this operation is expected to be the need for experts with discernment ability to judge, so many people get antiques but only dispose of them cheaply as waste.
In Chongqing, there was a fisherman who fished out precious cultural relics worth more than 100 million yuan, but unfortunately he did not know what antiques were, and he also felt that the big iron pillar he fished was heavy and sold as scrap iron.
Fishermen in Chongqing caught super heavy iron pillars
The manufacture of bronze is a great invention of our country, when people used it to cook food, to make sacrificial utensils, but also to manufacture a variety of bronze weapons, but the manufacturing cost of bronze is very high, in ancient times known as "gold", made of red copper and other chemical elements tin, lead and other alloys, the performance is very good, but generally are used by the nobility, the folk are not able to think of it.
So what materials are generally used in the folk, of course, iron, the price of iron is much cheaper than bronze, the performance is also better, it is a product with higher cost performance, so it is widely used in the folk, but iron has a very big disadvantage, that is, it is not resistant to corrosion, often rusting very fast, so now many of the excavated cultural relics are mostly bronze, iron can not be passed down at all.
It is for this reason that many people call iron scrap copper rotten iron, if anyone finds a bronze in the ground, most of them think that it may be a cultural relic, but if it is a rusty iron, they will not care much, that is, such a misunderstanding makes a fisherman in Chongqing miss 300 million.
On the Jialing River in Chongqing that day, a fisherman went to the river to fish as usual, thinking that he could have a good harvest today and change more money to live.
Just when a net pocket was thrown into the river, the fisherman felt that something was wrong, the net pocket seemed to hang something, and it was heavier than the usual fish, and the fisherman was excited, he felt that he must have caught a particularly large fish, which could buy a good price.
But when the fisherman collected the net, he found that the thing was much heavier than expected, and he could not pull it on his own, so he hurriedly called other friends to pull the net together, and when the thing in the net slowly surfaced, the fisherman was dumbfounded, there was no big fish at all, just a black cylinder.
At that time, the fishermen still thought whether it would be a treasure, so they dragged the iron pillar to the shore with great force, carefully studied it, this iron pillar was more than 70 centimeters high, 25 centimeters in diameter, and weighed 85 kilograms, and it was not known how long it had been in the water, the whole body was still smooth, and there were some words that people could not understand, and everyone began to talk about it, thinking that this might be a treasure, but the fishermen did not think so, he felt that this was also an iron knot.
Fishermen sell antiques as scrap iron
The fishermen were very upset after returning home, they had planned to catch a lot of fish today, but in the end they only hit such a useless iron lump, and they didn't have any harvest today, so it was better to sell this big guy quickly, maybe they could get a sum of money.
Thinking like this, the fishermen pulled the iron pillar out of the door, found the local waste collection station to sell the iron pillar, the boss looked at such a large iron pillar but his eyes lit up, weighed the weight, and gave the fishermen 65 yuan.
At this time, the fishermen were happy, in that era, 65 yuan was not a small amount, it could be worth several months' wages of workers, and it was equivalent to even if they did not fish for a long time, there was no problem in life.
The nearby villagers heard this news and were also jealous, saying that the fishermen had bumped into the big luck, picked up such a large iron pillar, exchanged so much money, and many people also followed the example of the fishermen and ran to the Jialing River to catch the big iron pillar, but unfortunately found nothing.
This matter spread ten, ten hundred, and soon spread from a small village to the town, when the staff who carried out the cultural relics protection work heard about this matter, they felt very strange, and vaguely felt that this was not a simple iron pillar, so they ran to the local waste collection station to find this iron pillar.
Fortunately, such a large iron pillar can not be disposed of in one day or two days, the staff looked at the entire iron pillar polishing and forging process, thinking that this is definitely not a general iron pillar, but made by precision craftsmen, and engraved with ancient characters of the iron pillar, so immediately with the waste station people at a price of 3 times higher to buy back, pulled back to the town's research institute.
The large iron pillar is the real Western Han Bridge pier worth more than 100 million
After careful identification and comparison by the experts of the institute, they knew that the writing engraved on the iron pillar was the bird seal script, which was an extremely ancient script that ordinary people had never seen, let alone an old fisherman with no culture.
So what is the origin of this iron pillar? Experts rummaged through a large number of materials to find the source of the iron pillar, and finally set their sights on the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty.
According to the relevant records of the "Records of History" and other sources, in order to better manage the southwest region during the period of Emperor Wu of Han, Emperor Wu of Han built a large number of roads and bridges, and the iron pillars were found in the river, so in terms of its size, it should be a pier left at that time.
Because of the long-term immersion in the water, the iron pillar itself is isolated from oxygen, so it has not been seriously corroded for so many years, and it can still roughly retain its original appearance, and the appearance of this iron pillar is a major cultural relics discovery for the whole of Chongqing.
Many people in the industry have been the first to get the news, have to this iron pillar for valuation, some experts estimate that the value of this iron pillar is at least 300 million, but for such cultural relics, money can not measure its value, the real value is its cultural value, the valuation is just some use of expert identity to cover up their own businessmen's estimated market price, this iron pillar will never be sold and auctioned in the market.
After the true identity of the iron pillar was revealed, it shocked many people, including the fishermen and the owner of the waste recycling station at that time, how could they know that this iron pillar would have such a high value, when they only got the price of only 65 yuan and 195 yuan, but in our country, selling cultural relics is illegal, and they should also be grateful for their ignorance, otherwise they will suffer a serious crime.
For this iron pillar, it is also a life of nine deaths, when the staff found it, the waste recycling station people said that just one day away, it will be thrown into the iron furnace smelting and forging, then the culture and history it recorded will no longer exist.
Nowadays, this iron bridge pier that has crossed a thousand years of history has been well placed in the Sichuan Provincial Museum, and has also become one of the treasures of the museum's five major towns, which is its best home, and also gives us this opportunity to travel through time and see again the fine works created by skilled craftsmen at that time, as well as the history of the Western Han Dynasty recorded on this iron pillar.