Dumping shops were actually the furnace rooms of the Qing Dynasty, and all kinds of drawbacks were naturally inevitable. What kind of scissors cost money, are oiled and waxed, are flat, are colored, and are weighed? However, this is still within the tolerance range of ordinary business people. What's more, it's not easy to open this kind of business. It involves money. There is no big threshold. You can't open it with a hard background. You also need to have a strong identification ability. Things like lead-filled ingots have a long history. It is difficult to identify them before they are broken. of. In reality, sometimes the ingot cannot be cut open, and it all depends on the salesman's eye.
There are not many dumping stores in Guangzhou. The one with the oldest brand name and the brightest sign is "Jufenghao". This dumping shop is an authentic brand with a century-old history. When Francois came to do business, the cross silver cakes they brought out to pay the bill were said to be the ones who hosted the show. Not only did many big-name merchants in the city sell silver ingots to him, but most of the silver in the Chief Secretary's treasury in Guangdong also came from his family.
The front of the dumping store is small, and a wave of heat can hit your face before you even get inside. Although the gold and silver were sold in the workshop behind the front door, it was actually only the distance between the front and back rooms. It doesn't work to insulate heat.
The counter of a dumping shop is higher than that of an ordinary store, but not as high as a pawn shop where you have to raise your arms to get up. Firstly, it is to allow customers to see the scene of cutting and turning silver inside, so as to avoid disputes, and secondly, to prevent strongmen from jumping into the counter and robbing the silver. Therefore, there are no tables and chairs in the store to entertain customers that are often found in other large stores. .
The person in charge of the counter today is Shopkeeper Xiao Shen, the son of Mr. Shen. His neck was slightly crooked when he hit it, so he was nicknamed "Shen Gongbao". Despite his young age, "Shen Gongbao" has an eye for color that is no less than Nai's father. He can tell the rough quality of most silver just by looking at it, and he's pretty close to it.
Shopkeeper Xiao Shen is busy at the counter. Dumping shop business is busy. During the circulation process, the silver was cut into smaller and smaller pieces, and in the end it became a pile of broken silver nuggets with messy quality and weight. It was very troublesome to do accounting or payment. Therefore, every once in a while, merchants everywhere would send the scattered silver coins they received to their shops to cast ingots. Various pieces of silver received in the Yamen also had to be converted into official ingots.
Seeing the Australian "official messenger" arriving, "Shen Gongbao" rushed up to greet him.
"...I wonder if the official has come to the shop, what can I do for you? This shop sells goods, and I am very self-sufficient when it comes to sex..."
Li Ziyu said you're welcome, I'm here to ask you to identify the origin of the silver ingot and take a look at its quality. With that said, he took out the silver ingot.
"Shen Gongbao" took it and felt something was wrong when he took it. Why? Because he didn't recognize the font size on the silver ingot.
According to the rules, as long as the silver ingots come out of the dumping store, they will be cast with the store's name and the fineness of the silver ingot. This is equivalent to a trademark and a guarantee of credibility. But he had never heard of the characters cast on these twelve taels of ingots.
There were not many dumping shops in the society at that time, and it goes without saying that there were no small places where silver ingots were circulated. There were dumping shops only in large commercial ports and administrative centers. As far as the entire Guangzhou Prefecture is concerned, only this prefecture city and Foshan Town have dumping shops, and there are no more than fifteen large and small ones. Even if you look at the whole country, there are not many dumping shops. Therefore, most shopkeepers in dumping shops can tell where the silver ingots were cast by identifying the font size on them, and know the reputation of the font size.
Shops and people are happy to use a brand name with a good reputation. If the reputation is average or the brand name is unfamiliar, you will not feel at ease after receiving such a silver ingot. You will have to go to a dumping shop or a bank pawn shop to ask a clerk to take a look. .
Since the brand name is so important, some criminals forge the brand name stamps of well-known dumping shops. Forging silver ingots has happened since ancient times. In order to maintain credibility and facilitate peer identification, each brand has its own secret mark on the stamp, which is invisible to outsiders, but peers can tell the authenticity at a glance.
The name on the silver ingot is "Sanjiangmao", which is the first time Xiao Shen has seen it. As far as Guangzhou is concerned, in addition to the silver ingots cast by the same industry, the foreign silver ingots are either from the two capitals or smelted in Suzhou, Hangzhou, Hankou, Jiujiang and other large commercial ports. Basically, Shopkeeper Xiao Shen knows the name sizes of these silver ingots. I have never seen this one before.
Unfamiliar font sizes often contain risks, so shopkeeper Xiao Shen had to be cautious.
"This silver ingot has a brand name that I have never seen before in this shop." Shopkeeper Xiao Shen said, "It should not be made by a local trader. It is also not a common foreign trade name in the local area. It is probably dumped by a new trader from outside the country."
"How's the condition?"
"Shen Gongbao" looked at the silver ingot, the quality mark on it was 935. This was roughly in line with his first impression when he saw it: this silver was by no means cheap. Put it on a scale and find that the portion is exactly the same.
"Master, just look at the silver like this. There's nothing wrong with the color." Shopkeeper Xiao Shen said, "However, I still feel something is wrong. I wonder if I can allow the shop to open this silver ingot and take a closer look." ?”
Li Ziyu had obtained permission in advance and agreed immediately.
Shopkeeper Xiao Shen took the silver ingot to the scissors. This pair of scissors is specially used to cut silver ingots. At that time, wherever money came in and out, there must be this thing. This is a pair of scissors with a short blade and a long handle. One handle is fixed on a wide and heavy wooden bench, and the other side can be opened and closed. "Shen Gongbao" held the silver ingot in his left hand and placed it on the scissors' edge. He held the scissors handle with his right hand, looked at his bent body, and suddenly sat down on the scissors handle. With just a "clang" sound, the silver ingot was broken into two halves.
Shopkeeper Xiao Shen picked up the silver ingot and took a closer look. It was not filled with lead. Looking at the stubble, there were also honeycomb-shaped faults. It looked like the silver was not bad at all.
However, when holding this ingot of silver in his hand, shopkeeper Xiao Shen always felt a little "unsure". This was probably their instinct in this industry.
Now "Shen Gongbao" is in a dilemma. If he says "no problem", not to mention that if something goes wrong and the government wants to pursue him, he can't afford to walk around. Just the reputation of "being wrong" will have a great impact on his reputation. .
But when you say "I have a problem," the other party will naturally ask what the problem is. He couldn't tell.
"Shen Gongbao" thought about it and decided to call his father to come out. Immediately, an apprentice was called and asked to go away and call the old shopkeeper back.
Shopkeeper Shen was not in the store - he went out to visit customers. Hearing that there was money in the store, his son didn't dare to make a conclusion, so he hurried back. When I went to the store and saw an official from Australia, I had to deal with it a little bit. Only then did I hear what my son said.
Shopkeeper Shen took the broken silver ingot, closed it again and looked at the font size carefully, with a strange expression on his face. After looking at it for a long time, he put down the silver ingot and asked, "May I ask Master Chai, where did you get this silver ingot?"
Li Ziyu said: "This is the stolen property recovered during the investigation. I came here to ask you to identify its origin and quality." He looked at the expressions of Shopkeeper Shen and his son, and felt that there might be something wrong here, and asked, "What? Silver?" Is it fake?"
"I don't dare to say whether it's true or not," Shopkeeper Shen said, "but I know the origin of the Sanjiangmao brand name."
It turns out that this "Sanjiangmao" is also a dumping store. The store is not in the city, but in Foshan. Foshan is one of the "four major towns in the world" with prosperous industry and commerce and a large population. Naturally, money circulation is also very developed. Sanjiangmao has the right time and place, and his business is very good.
However, "Sanjiang Shigeru" suffered a fire a few decades ago. Not only was the store burned to the ground, but the shopkeeper's family members were also said to have died in the fire. The shop was completely wiped off the ground. No trace was left behind.
Now that the shop is gone, there are naturally fewer and fewer silver ingots stamped with its name. Gradually it completely disappeared from the market. However, the older generation, especially the people around Foshan, still retain the memory of "Sanjiangmao". Shopkeeper Lao Shen naturally remembers this incident and recognizes the stamp of this font size.
"...The stamp is genuine. I can tell that." Shopkeeper Shen said, "But this silver ingot is not necessarily made by Sanjiang Mao."
Silver is a metal that is easily oxidized. Although the ancients did not understand the physical and chemical changes of metals, they knew that silver would turn black over time. Shopkeeper Shen said that the silver ingots of the Sanjiangmao brand reappeared after decades, or that someone had saved these silver ingots and had no use. This is possible. It is not uncommon to store silver for decades or hundreds of years. But the age-old "old silver ingot" and the silver ingot Li Ziyu brought are completely different in silver.
The second and most likely possibility is that someone somehow obtained the original "Sanjiang Mao" stamp and cast a batch of silver ingots themselves.
"Where is the quality?" Li Ziyu wrote down what Shopkeeper Shen said in his notebook.
Shopkeeper Shen said nothing. He picked up the silver ingot and looked at it carefully. After playing with it for a long time, he said, "This is Zhu Tiyin."
"What silver?" Li Ziyu didn't understand and asked.
"Zhu Tiyin." Shopkeeper Shen said slowly, "It is said to be silver from Dongman in Yunnan and Guizhou. It is said that it existed in the Han Dynasty, but there was never much. In this dynasty...after the She'an Rebellion in the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Tiyin was flowing out. The collection of silver has almost stopped, and the little old man followed his father and saw a piece of silver ornaments used by the nobles of the Dongman chieftain."
"Shopkeeper Shen, is this Zhu Tiyin silver?"
"It's not the silver we have here." Shopkeeper Shen spoke very cautiously, because the jewelry made by Zhu Tiyin is also circulated in the market. It would be inappropriate to cut off other people's wealth with one rash sentence. "I only heard that Dong Man used a few coins to make money." Different kinds of ores are mixed and smelted, but what kind of ores are smelted and how they are smelted is not known. These are secret methods passed down orally from generation to generation by the Xidong natives. We, a businessman in Guangzhou, have neither interest nor knowledge. I don’t have the ability to find out.” (To be continued.)
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