Antique dealers who came to buy antique calligraphy and paintings in the 1870s. Photo by John Thomson
In the old days, when opening antique shops, there has always been a saying that "it will not be open for three years, and it will be opened for three years", and shrewd antique dealers especially like to do business with big guys, they can ask for prices, and rich buyers do not care. And there are some other bargaining, "fighting heart eyes" antique trading fun, reading can't help but be funny -
The "Qing Barnyard Banknote" said that Hu Xueyan, a wealthy merchant in the Qing Dynasty, was good at collecting antiques and especially loved expensive ones, and many antique merchants came to the door to sell after learning about it.
One day, a merchant asked for a bronze statue, opened his mouth and asked for 800 taels of silver, and said: "This real price, do not make money." Hu Xueyan was greatly displeased when he heard this: "Er, I don't make money with me, when will I stay?" After paying the merchant the silver, he waved him away and said, "You don't have to come later." ”
This businessman who sold bronze statues did not carefully study the psychology of customers, and regarded The Broad Guy as an ordinary person, thus ruining the opportunity to make money from Hu Xueyan in the future, which was really unlucky.
Bronzes sold by antique shops during the Qing Dynasty. Photo by John Thomson
Unlike him, the owner of the Juzhenzhai Jewelry Store in Beijing Liuli Factory had been dealing with Mrs. Yu Fengzhi of the "Young Marshal's Mansion" and his secretary, Miss Zhao Si, for many years.
Once, he sent his companion Gao Dianqing to the "Young Marshal's Mansion" to sell an oval emerald, this gem was bought for 1800 pieces of ocean, Yu Fengzhi asked him to leave the gem to find someone to identify, after a few days, Yu Fengzhi called Gao Dianqing to go, suspecting that the gem was not pure in color, and asked him to take things away.
When Gao Dianqing walked out of the gate listlessly, he talked to the doorman and accidentally forgot the small bag containing the gem in the doorman, and when he went back to look for it, the doorman actually ignored the gem. Gao Dianqing returned to Juzhenzhai and was really afraid of being "fired" by the boss. But the boss said magnanimously: "The tiger still has time to nap!" This doorman is an old pole of Fengtian, and we can't afford it; Ming watched him take it, and you had to give it to him. As long as the road is not blocked, it will be earned back without a good product. From then on, Gao Dianqing was willing to serve Juzhen Zhai with a dead heart.
The most popular antique shops are calligraphy and painting and porcelain, which are called soft and hard films in the jargon.
Later, Ju Zhenzhai bought a pair of emerald earrings with 3,000 pieces of ocean, which were still sent by Gao Dianqing to the "Young Marshal's Mansion" to ask Yu Fengzhi to see the goods. Yu Fengzhi looked at the earrings in pure green and exquisite workmanship, and said happily: "This is the emerald gemstone, which is a hundred times stronger than the original one." How much does this emerald gem pendant I left behind for you?" Gao said at least 15,000 pieces of ocean. Yu Fengzhi bought jewelry, as long as she liked it in her heart, never bargained - she thought that bargaining was a loss of identity - she nodded, and the ocean of tens of thousands of white flowers was pulled to Juzhenzhai by car.
Juzhenzhai seems to have lost 1,800 pieces of ocean, but earned 12,000 yuan. It is said that Ju Zhenzhai and the Shao Shuai Mansion do high-end jadeite jewelry trading, and sometimes they can trade hundreds of thousands of silver dollars at a time.
Collectors also have to rack their brains when trading in collections, because both buyers and sellers are engaged in invisible psychological warfare, and this psychological warfare is like the internal skill competition of martial arts masters, and victory and defeat are often between one thought.
The operators of antique shops are generally knowledgeable and have excellent eyesight. Photo by Heida Morrison
In the 1920s and 1930s, the coin collector XuanGuyu got the news that there were more than 80 kinds of gold yuan and silver ingots from the Ming and Qing dynasties in the Qiu Tianbao Silver Building on Nanjing Road, and the pure weight of silver reached more than 5,000 taels, and the silver building was intended to be sold.
So he dressed up in disguise, in fact, he did not need to dress up, he had a big waist and a round waist, usually liked to wear a cotton robe with wide sleeves and a large collar, presbyopia, and a pair of glasses, himself was like a country old man - carrying a yuanbao from the Qing Dynasty Tongzhi period, pretending to be a countryman to go to the Qiu Tianbao Silver Building to ask for the exchange of legal tender. The guy in the silver building said that he could only increase the silver price by ten percent, and there was little publicity, indicating that he wanted to see the manager.
The manager looked at him dressed as a countryman and said that it was very polite to give you a price increase of ten percent, and we have a lot of this kind of yuan treasure here, if you want it, it will only increase the price by twenty percent. Xuangu Yu pretended not to understand, asking to see those yuanbao, the manager really immediately moved out more than 80 kinds of yuanbao. Xuan also asked how much these yuan treasures were priced? How much is the bid price? The manager said that the price increase was ten percent when entering, and the price increase was twenty percent when selling. "Is this true?" Xuangu Yu pressed forward step by step, "A gentleman's word, the horse is difficult to chase."
"The manager is not to be outdone." Sell me all your treasures together!" As soon as Xuangu's foolish words came out, the manager's face turned white, but because he had the words first, he had to bear the pain of selling the Yuanbao to him. In the end, only one sentence was said: "This kind of yuan treasure was originally sold at twice the price of silver, but now it is cheaper for you." ”
The quality of the stalls is not high, and even the fakes are infested, but the low price can be negotiated.
From the trading story of a bronze ware of the Shang Dynasty, it is even more able to show the psychology of the antique dealers. In order to obtain precious antiques at a low price, they even adopted the strategy of putting long lines to catch big fish.
During the Republic of China, Liu Zongyuan, the owner of the "Zhenggu Zhai" antique shop in Chengdu Zhonglie Ciba Street, bought a Shang Dynasty Ti Liang Jie for 300 yuan. Connoisseurs estimate that it should be worth 30,000-40,000 yuan, but because of the "priceless market", a buyer has not been found for a while.
A "Kyo Yuzi" — a "high-class horse boy" sent from Beijing by antique dealers to search for rare relics, jewelry, calligraphy and paintings — caught information about the value of this Ti Liang Zi and immediately stayed in a hotel near Zhonglieci Street.
In order not to reveal his intentions, in order to pave the way for "bargaining", he suppressed a strong curiosity and desire to buy, not only did not ask for "goods", but even did not enter the door of "Zhengguzhai "Zhengguzhai", even if he occasionally had to pass through the Zhonglie ancestral temple, he only walked on the street edge of the door opposite the "Zhengguzhai".
After a year of "psychological warfare" and "spiritual warfare", Liu Zongyuan couldn't stand it, and let people pull this "Jing Slip" into the store to "see the goods", and he just hummed and pretended to be deaf and dumb, indicating that he was not interested in this Ti Liang Jie at all. Because he has seen Liu Zongyuan's fatal weakness, Liu both loves prostitution and is addicted to opium, and there is always a day when he is anxious to use money.
As the year drew to a close, Liu Zongyuan was in a desperate need for money, and he was so tight that he didn't even have the money to buy opium cigarettes. Just when the addiction was steep and the heart was itching, "Jing Yuzi" expressed to him that he was willing to take over the Liang Jie, but he was only willing to bid 1400 yuan. Liu Zongyuan had to endure the pain of being cut and accepted the price. "Jing Yuzi" brought this bronze age exquisite product back to Beijing and sold it for 70,000 yuan. The psychological warfare of "Jing Yuzi" to catch the old antiques dealers in Chengdu was also defeated.
Owner and apprentice of an antique shop. Photo by Heida Morrison
Collectors who see their favorite collections should have written excitement on their faces like adolescents seeing their dream lover, but slowly, you may pay a considerable amount of money for this - emoticon fees.
Therefore, veterans engaged in collecting, even if they see the favorite things, can also do not show their faces, and then engage in a game of "cat and mouse" with the seller, or deliberately turn a blind eye to the favorite collections, or pretend not to understand, or even turn around and leave, so that the seller can't figure out which thing you want, and then slash a knife according to the seller's opening price, so that you can buy the favorite collection at a lower price. Senior collectors earnestly warn friends who are engaged in collecting, and they cannot help but have such a sentence: "You must bargain!"
In addition to small cultural relics, there are also large Buddha statues in the antique shops during the Republic of China, some of which were stolen from grottoes.
Mr. Wei Li, the leading book collector in China, has collected ancient books and rare books for decades, and has gone through five levels and six generals. However, once because he did not penetrate the psychology of the seller, the seller quoted a book of 2,000 yuan, he gave 200,000 yuan to others with one mouth, and the result was spent elsewhere, staging a realistic version of maicheng.
That time, he and his friends went to a place outside the East Fifth Ring Road in Beijing to collect books, such a dilapidated place, beyond his imagination, and it turned out that the people living here were people who collected old goods. The seller lived in a dilapidated bungalow with uneven brick floors on the floor, only to see him painstakingly remove a bag of books from the inner room separated by the plywood, and fall to the ground with a whimper, and some of the books poured out were dripping down. It turned out that these books were once stored in the basement of the publishing house, and the basement pipes ran water, and the books were soaked in water, so they were disposed of as waste. These books are different versions of the "Pipe", although there are more than 20, only one Ming edition of the Zhu mo overprint is still relatively rare, and the other line-bound books are basically Clear engraved books, which do not enter Wei Li's eyes at all. The last Republic of China typeset edition attracted Wei Li, because it had Guo Moruo and Wen Yiduo's dense batch of proofreading, which was rare to set two people to approve the proofreading in one book. Talking about the price, the seller quoted two thousand, Wei Li opened his mouth to open 200,000, the seller was hesitant to say a "line" word has not yet fallen, he was pulled by the wife on the side of the sleeve, and finally changed to "I consider considering, tomorrow I will reply to you."
On the way back, my friend complained that Wei Li's offer was too high, saying that the seller had originally received hundreds of yuan, and the quotation of two thousand was to let the bargain. As a result, the seller of the book sold it to someone else for 220,000 yuan. Wei Li then heard more and more exciting news: first an acquaintance said that he spent 1.2 million yuan to receive the "Guo Batch Pipe", then the auction company said that 1.8 million was collected, and the last friend specially invited him to eat and watch, saying: "2.6 million yuan to buy, cheap, right?" By this time, the little mind of the great bibliophile was already fragile to the point of being unbearable.