The general public is unfamiliar with antique artifacts, so even if they are inadvertently obtained, their value cannot be discerned. In the 1970s, a farmer who made a living by picking up rags picked up a piece of copper from the Golden Kingdom period, but in his eyes, it was at best a copper mine with words engraved on it, and coincidentally, the farmer had a niece who was studying history, and when he came to his house to play, he saw this chic copper block and asked him to study it. Later, the niece took the copper block back to the school for the teacher to identify, and the value of the copper mine was determined.
Because people's awareness of the protection of cultural relics is not strong, there are countless cultural relics covered in dust. Coincidentally, in the 1980s, a fisherman in Chongqing surnamed Chen also fished for a cultural relic, which was a large iron block, 75 centimeters high and weighing 90 kilograms.
Before it was salvaged, the fisherman thought it was a very heavy big fish, so he dragged the fishing net in his hand desperately, afraid that it would run, and as a result, after spending a lot of effort to pull the fishing net up, he found that it was not a big fish at all, but a piece of scrap iron, and it was engraved with unintelligible symbols.
The fisherman did not have any common sense of cultural relics, so he did not care, he thought that he had to work hard to get such a thing, and then he had to sell some money, so he borrowed a car and dragged this piece of "scrap iron" to the waste station, wanting to weigh and sell it. But the owner of the scrap station felt unusual when he saw the scrap iron, and gave him 65 yuan in his pocket, leaving the "scrap iron".
65 yuan at that time is a lot of money, pick up a piece of scrap iron for 65 yuan, how to think is worth it, Chen Fisherman took the money and left satisfied, the owner of the waste station looked for another day to find a time to transport this piece of "scrap iron away". But before the owner of the waste station could act, someone heard the sound of the wind and came looking for him.
The visitors are local units specializing in the management of cultural relics. Because the news in the small village spread quickly, Chen Yufu's white money collection soon became a household name in the surrounding villages, and the more everyone talked about it, the wider the scope of the transmission. Later, this matter reached the ears of the local people in charge of managing cultural relics, and the people in the department heard that it was salvaged from the river, and there was a text engraved on it, which immediately attracted attention, and immediately sent people to check it.
Later, after research, it was found that the inscription on this iron pillar was a bird seal script. The Bird Seal Script appeared in the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, flourished for a period of time, and then withdrew from the historical stage in the last year of the Warring States Period. The bird seal on the iron pillar was carved during the Period of Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty, and the iron pillar was actually an iron bridge pier, and according to the volume of this iron bridge pier, the scale of this iron bridge is not small, from the hands of the Western Han Dynasty government.
In fact, there was already an iron smelting industry in the Warring States period, but because of the immature technology in that period, only some agricultural tools or a small number of handmade tools could be smelted, and rarely smelted weapons. In the Western Han Dynasty, the iron smelting industry was in a state of rapid development, and the number of iron smelting workshops was relatively large, so the use of iron was quite extensive, not only able to produce spears, large knives and other tools, but also smelt some daily necessities.
Although a piece of iron is not worth much today, this piece of iron has been passed down for more than two thousand years, and the traces of writing on the surface of the iron pillar have not been washed away by the water, so it is also a rare object. In order to give the cultural relics a better preservation environment, the Cultural Relics Administration consulted with the owner of the waste station, gave him 200 yuan, and bought the iron bridge pier from him.
Now this iron bridge pier is stored in the Sichuan Provincial Museum, and the environment inside is constant temperature and humidity, which can maximize the protection of cultural relics. Some experts have estimated the value of this iron bridge pier, thinking that it can be worth more than 100 million yuan today, so that Chen Fisherman only sold 65 yuan, is not a loss of about 100 million yuan?