Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

Although it is said that the most common job that ordinary people do when they come to a bank is to deposit and withdraw money, and sometimes they may take out a loan or repay a loan, in fact, the business of a bank is much more than that.

For example, banks are also responsible for leasing safes and even warehouses to store various financial items. Of course, this business also charges a fee.

The current underground vault is where Mr. Kimura stores his various things. According to the bank staff who accompanied them here, this warehouse should be the smallest in the warehouse.

There are eight silver-white shock-absorbing boxes of different sizes in the warehouse. Apparently Mr. Kimura considered how the person who would receive the items in the warehouse would take away the items in the warehouse.

I have to say that this also reflects the Japanese habit of not causing trouble to others, and this habit sometimes makes others feel more comfortable.

So Liang En and the others quickly brought the boxes to the ground with the help of the bank's trolley. Then, after completing the procedures at the bank, they drove back to Dublin by renting and returning cars without stopping.

The reason for driving was also very simple, because if they wanted to fly with this pile of things, they might encounter some unexpected situations, so they simply chose to drive and take the ferry back to Dublin.

Later that day, they drove a van to London. Because the house they had rented in London had been surrendered, Liang En and the others had to find a temporary hotel to live in.

Because of the anti-theft issue, they also made a vigil schedule at night, taking turns to get out of the car and stay in the car to guard the boxes.

Finally, in the afternoon of the next day, they returned to Dublin smoothly. Then the three of them went to Liang En's ranch together, and then opened the boxes in the underground storage room to look at the contents.

Although the boxes looked the same, during inspection they found Arabic numerals written on the corners of the boxes, so they decided to open the boxes in order from largest to smallest.

The first few boxes contained some self-produced European porcelain or various gold and silverware, such as Essen porcelain, silver candlesticks, silver dinner plates or forks, as well as some sterling silver or Silver gold plated jewelry.

Although the prices of these things are not cheap, they are not too expensive either. The only advantage is that it will be easier to sell them and you don't need to spend too much time looking for customers.

What makes people feel a little regretful is that there are not many precious metal items in pairs in this box, and the single silverware cannot really command a high price if it wants to be sold.

When they got to the fifth box, the contents finally changed. The box no longer contained the common gadgets, but some gold jewelry inlaid with semi-precious stones and precious stones.

Most of the jewelry in this batch are earrings, rings or necklaces for women. In terms of style, they belong to mass-produced jewelry from the Victorian period to the 1940s, but there are also some men's tie clips or keychains.

Unlike those things that are simply packed with shock-proof pads, these jewelry come with boxes, and some even have original jewelry boxes that can be seen at a glance, which obviously increases the value of these jewelry.

Although these jewelry are basically mass-produced jewelry for the emerging middle class starting from the Victorian era, if the original jewelry box can be preserved to this day, the value is not low.

The sixth and seventh boxes contained some works of art and miscellaneous antiques, including several oil paintings by second-tier European painters, an alabaster inkstand, and a gold-covered ebony figure with an obvious African style. That adds up to more than thirty pieces of messy stuff.

Liang En didn't know most of the things here, so he might need to spend some time looking up information to confirm. But a Picasso pencil sketch inside caught his attention.

This sketch looks only about the size of a palm, and the content on it is a bit rough, but from the content on the screen, the strength of the brush and the signature on the back, we can tell that it was indeed made by Picasso.

"Is it a Picasso painting? I heard this thing is very valuable." After hearing that Picasso's painting was discovered, Fan Meng and Joan of Arc were immediately attracted.

Because Picasso is so famous, even people like Fan Meng and Joan of Arc who don't know much about art know the name of this painter and have a general understanding of the value of his works.

"Not all Picasso's paintings are valuable." Liang En smiled and shook his head. "It depends on the size of the painting and the content on it."

"The content of this draft is obviously too simple, and the size of the paper is too small. At the same time, the pattern itself clearly shows that the other party did not pay much attention when drawing, so the price of something like this will naturally not be very high. .”

And this is also true. Liang En and the others quickly found something similar to this one, but they found that they had only sold more than 7,000 and less than 8,000 euros.

This price is naturally not low for a sketch, but if you consider that this thing was made by Picasso, the price always feels a little low.

"Not all calligraphy and paintings by famous people are valuable. Things like this that Picasso drew casually obviously have little value. The price they can be sold for is already based on Picasso's name."

Apart from this pair of Picasso paintings, there was nothing here that caught the eye. So after putting these things away in categories, the three people opened the last box.

The last box only contained two things, a large flat wooden box and a long wooden box. Before the box was opened, Liang En smelled a faint smell of rust.

"Sure enough, it's a Japanese sword." Based on the long shape of the wooden box, Liang En immediately guessed what was inside the box, and when he opened the long box, it turned out to be what he had guessed before.

There was a Japanese sword in a white sheath in the box. After pulling out part of it, Liang En found that the sword looked a little gray due to lack of maintenance for a long time.

Unlike stainless steel, the carbon steel used to make Japanese sword blades is actually an alloy that is very easily oxidized. Even if it is stored well and is not maintained for a short period of time, it will easily rust.

So although it can be seen now that Mr. Kimura really wanted to preserve the knife as much as possible at that time, he still could not prevent the blade from oxidizing. Fortunately, this level of oxidation only requires a little grinding by a grinder.

However, as the knife was gradually pulled out, Liang En found that the knife looked weathered, and some traces of scratches or even battles could be clearly seen on the knife.

This is not normal, because for Japanese samurai, although they will prepare several swords as replacements, considering the fact that ancient samurai swords are not cheap, qualified samurai will seriously maintain their weapons.

This has nothing to do with the so-called bushido spirit fabricated by the group of war criminals. It is mainly because traditional Japanese samurai need to use these knives as weapons to fight, and if there is a lack of maintenance, problems can easily occur on the battlefield.