Chapter 94: The Great Depression (Part Thirteen)
Translator: Etern, Kim_Guo
At night, Manhattan remained the busiest district in New York. It was filled with banks, shops, companies and offices. The tall building were like cold mountains and the clear glass forming the walls were like crystal palaces. The ladies strolled leisurely there, as if they were touring around the World Expo.
The multicolored street lights shimmered, high and low, far and close. The dense traffic was like a spiders web, it almost made one forget that they were in the great depression. The lights on the slow moving seemed real and virtual, seemed true and like a fantasy, sometimes on, sometimes off, like this plane, this space-time.
The many stars overhead were vast and slow, their light shining on the people on the streets different skin colors and nationalities.
Walking down the greek stairs of Chase Manhattan Bank, Huang Xuan wiped his face hard, as if he was trying to wipe away his fatigue. He hadn’t slept for 24 hours. Sitting with these world-renown business men, the pressure could drive the strength from his chest, but his bones stubbornly supported his body.
Hans worriedly looked at Huang Xuan and asked: “Are we returning to the Hilton?”
“We’re going to West 47th Street.” One cannot leave things until the last day. Huang Xuan understood this advice from his mom, instead of hoping things all go smoothly, work hard and finish the work before problems appear.
New York’s West 47th Street wasn’t more famous than Fifth Avenue, but if you needed to find this thing, you would hear people mention the following names: Antwerp Central Station, New York’s West 47th Street, London’s Hatton Garden, Ramat Gan in Tel Aviv, the Opera House District of Bombay and the Diamond City of India. That’s right, all these places sold diamonds.
Unlike the other places in the list, New York’s West 47th Street also sold other gemstones. Huang Xuan didn’t care about what other things they sold though, as according to Rolin’s info, Huang Xuan could find what he needed here. Although diamond certificates were annoying, it wasn’t more annoying than being poor.
Huang felt that this time has been the most unscrupulous since he started his Plane hopping travels because printing banknotes had too many requirements: There could be no other Plane bases, banknotes needed to be in use, it needed to be an era where the printing press existed, it needed to be when commercial development was advanced and it needed to be at a place where materials could be easily purchased. All this indicated that there is a limit to this craziness.
Since he was already in this crazy era, in crazy New York, Huang Xuan wouldn’t waste a single chance as there was still a cost to printing banknotes.
It was 8pm, the Nordstrom store was still open, like all the other business that had opened since the depression started and the boss, Nordstrom has been working harder than before. He inspected the counters, encouraged the staff, chatted with the customers and introduced products to them, even if the ring was only worth $30 USD.
As Hans opened the glass door carefully for Huang Xuan, dazzling light reflected back from the jewels and blinded them for a moment. Huang Xuan smiled.
Nordstrom noticed the tall Hans right away, he hurried forward and came to Huang Xuan, who was looking around, and said: “Sir, are you looking for jewellery?”
“Yes.” Huang Xuan was wearing a suit he had bought at Macy’s, looking like a gentleman who was going to a party. Even Hans was wearing a tailored suit. When Hans was getting his suit, he even said, “A few pieces of scrap clothes is worth $3,000 USD?”
The terse reply did not affect Nordstrom’s enthusiasm, his face was full of youthful enthusiasm. He used a Western greeting and extended his right arm, pointed it forward and said: “Welcome to Nordstrom. I’m the boss, Nordstrom. You won’t go wrong with Nordstrom if you’re looking for jewellery.”
This was the typical American style, assertive, confident but not necessarily true. Huang Xuan smiled and handed his hat to Hans. “I’d like to purchase some accessories for my family and friends.”
“Yes.” Nordstrom prolonged the ‘s’ sound and held his fists tightly. It seems that he understood, that he had met an important customer.
Nordstrom led Huang Xuan to a private room. “Are you a diplomat? Japanese?” he asked while waiting for the attendant to get the jewellery.
Huang Xuan smiled, and just said, “My surname is Huang.”
Nordstrom seemed to have no idea, and went on to introduce the jewellery. When the attendant brought over the jewellery, he got even more excited.
During the early 20th century, plain gemstones, new ones that had no history behind them, were not too expensive. Take diamonds for example: Hope, the most famous diamond in the world, the blue diamond also known as the Diamond of Misfortune, was bought by Selim Habib of Turkey for $400,000 USD. In 1911, it was sold to the Washington Post scion Edward McLean for $114,000 USD. In the new age, the price would increase by at least 10 times. This is, if the Smithsonian Institute was willing to sell it and if someone was willing to buy it.
Although the price of jewels didn’t depreciate during the depression, it didn’t increase either. Normally, the diamonds at Nordstrom be priced from $400 to $2,000 USD, but this didn’t meet Huang Xuan’s requirements. Since he couldn’t bring home the certificates to authenticate these diamonds, the price of these low value diamonds would be several times lower, to the point where he might not be able to sell them. Also, it costs energy for Rolin to bring these diamonds back. Even though its cheaper to bring back the carbon-based diamonds, it would still cost tens of thousands of energy units. The diamonds must be worth at least 100,000 RMB, otherwise he would be losing money.
Seeing Huang Xuan shake his head, Nordstrom began to get a little worried. He sent the attendant away and asked, “What do you think, Mr. Huang?”
“I’m looking for jewellery without much metal. For Diamonds it must be a carat diamond, 4C grading needs to be high and it needs to have good value preservation. As for other gemstones, I personally like ruby, for sapphires, the color should be uniform and I don’t want crystals.” Carat diamonds are those that are at least 1 carat in size, although thats only 0.2g, bigger diamonds are always better. There is a huge difference in price between diamonds of different sizes.
Nordstrom’s eyes almost popped out at this. Among gemstones, ruby and sapphires were two of the most valuable, slightly better ones would cost almost $10,000 USD. Not to mention diamonds, 1 grade level in the 4C rating would increase the price sharply. He looked at Huang Xuan’s attire again, nodded and said: “Please wait for a moment.” After that, he turned and left the room.
Huang Xuan casually drank some tea while waiting. Before coming here, he had already spent $3,000,000 USD at other jewellery stores. By tomorrow, almost everyone in the jewellery industry would know about the young and rich Asian man that swept through New York City.
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For the next three days, Huang Xuan met with Steve, Sloan and Rockefeller several more times and sold four more designs. Probably within the next few years, the European Auto Industry will suffer some heavy losses.
At the end, Rockefeller wasn’t able to get the design of the Boeing 307 that he dreamed about. The amount offered by Ford and GM got higher and higher, until the end, when the design of the BMW 326 was sold for $1,200,000 USD. Compared to the output of the Beta Factory though, where $50,000,000 USD worth of banknotes were printed each day, it was like a hair compared to nine cows.
Although the amount earned from the three companies wasn’t much, but they guaranteed the safety of Huang Xuan’s funds. Besides the $120,000,000 USD processed by Chase Manhattan Bank, Citigroup signed a deposit of $80,000,000 USD, HSBC closed $48,000,000 USD and the United Bank did $28,000,000 USD.
According to the American spirit, no one would assume Huang Xuan’s money was illegal without proof, no one would reject a large customer. Even if the money was illegal, they wouldn’t lose anything. Of course, Huang Xuan wouldn’t lose anything either.
Using this money, Huang Xuan kept buying various jewellery, paintings, antiques, stamps and other collectibles. His only standard was the profit margin. If Rolin estimated the item to be worth $1,000,000 back home, then it must use no more than $100,000 USD worth of energy to transport it. Later on, the standard was set to $10,000 USD, then to $5,000 USD. Since the base could only get 200,000,000 units of energy at most, that means, to guarantee safety, only 150,000,000 units of energy could be used to transport items, that was around $10,000,000 USD worth of energy. Seeing that there wasn’t anyone trustworthy in Brazil, they couldn’t temporarily increase the energy reserve. Regrettably, Huang Xuan needed to leave most of the ceramics, enamel and the rest of the money back in P101. On a whim, he sent all these items back to China. As for who received these items, he didn’t care.
Of course, the return of many art works was over 100 times, but in one short week, he wasn’t able to buy too many.
After the forth time Huang Xuan walked out of Hammer’s department store, Armand Hammer was already Huang Xuan’s best friend. He had sold to Huang Xuan $89,000,000 USD worth of art, most of which were from Russia. During that time, the “Generous Chinese” Huang Xuan hadn’t haggled even once. Except for the duplicates, Huang Xuan purchased all the lost art works. It was said, that the Red Capitalist (Hammer) had also reached his profit goal during the depression: $4,000,000 USD. According to Rolin, his profit was probably over $20,000,000 USD, but that didn’t matter.
The vintage car seemed to float as it moved, colorful curtains were shown in the window, the bright colors was like Huang Xuan’s mood at the moment.
Huang Xuan shook hands with Hammer again and said, “I’m going back to China now, I hope Mr. Hammer will visit one day.”
“I will, I will.” Hammer strongly shook his hand.
“Right not, my country is not peaceful. I don’t know when it will develop and become stronger. By that time, I might not be around, but I hope Mr. Hammer will visit and take care of it for me.”
Hammer was sad to hear that. He held Huang Xuan’s hands and repeated, “I will, I will.”
Huang Xuan smiled and got in the car. Hans closed the door emotionlessly behind him. The Ford Model T emitted a thick cloud of smoke, like the dust of history.
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