Xiao Yifei hung up the phone, poured himself a cup of coffee, and began to slowly look at the auction list.

The catalogue is really well printed, the gold and silver objects inside look shining, and the details of the paintings are clearly printed. Turning to the section about Chinese art, the jade in it makes people know the origin of the phrase "warm as jade" at a glance, and the porcelain is also very exquisite and full of texture.

After reading it, Xiao Yifei understood why the list of lots in each auction is sold for money instead of giving away for free, the cost of this thing is not small, if it is free, 10,000 people will receive it, and the auction company's hundreds of thousands of net profits will go out.

This auction is a German collector's collection, most of which are European artworks, less than ten related to China, these antiques are basically ordinary things, there are no precious goods as Xiao Yifei imagined, and the estimated value of these porcelain and jade objects is not more than about 150,000 euros, and several of them have the words "from teksing" written on the back.

Xiao Yifei was worse, but this "teksing" Chinese name should be called Taixing, a Chinese shipwreck full of Chinese porcelain.

To talk about this is to talk about an Englishman named McHatcher. Known as the "nemesis of underwater cultural relics", this person has salvaged ancient shipwrecks in China's inland seas and adjacent high seas many times throughout his life, and resold countless precious Chinese cultural relics. This person can be described as a pirate in the new era, which makes the Chinese cultural relics community itch when they mention him.

Mack's first theft of antiquities from the South China Sea came in 1984, when Hatcher read a message in the dusty archives of the Dutch East India Company: "In the winter of 1725, the Chinese merchant ship Goldmarsen, laden with porcelain and gold, ran aground on its way to Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, in Guangzhou. After that, Hatcher took great pains and after more than a year of salvage, he finally succeeded in salvaging the wreck out of the South China Sea. The wreck was then towed into the open sea for hiding.

A year later, under the guise of an international convention on "allowing auctions of unclaimed shipwrecks", he brought all the remaining 239,000 pieces of blue and white porcelain, 125 gold ingots and some other cultural relics on the ship to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where the original shipping target was located, and handed them over to Christie's for auction in exchange for a high return of more than 20 million US dollars.

Hatcher's notorious acts of piracy have been condemned by many countries, but although there are some international conventions that can be used as a matter, they do not have substantive legal significance, coupled with the fact that this person is familiar with the relevant laws of various countries, and he is scheming, cunning and meticulous, leaving few flaws, so to this day, Hatcher can still blatantly mix in the waters of various countries, especially on the high seas, and continue to engage in the business of sea treasure theft year after year, and governments can not help him.

But sometimes that's the case, but the bad guys have good luck, and in 1998, he was lucky enough to salvage another galleon, the Teksing, which was sailing from China to Europe.

On January 14, 1822 (the 2nd year of Daoguang of the Qing Dynasty), the Taixing sailed out of Xiamen Port with 1,800 Chinese immigrants and thousands of tons of cargo, but unfortunately it never reached its destination Jakarta.

On 7 February, a British East India Company found the Tystar as floating debris in the South China Sea, north of the Java Sea and east of Sumatra, and the British merchant ship rescued 190 survivors, with the rest of the crew and passengers lying on the bottom of the sea.

After Hatcher stole the Taixing, he smashed more than half of the ancient porcelain and threw it into the sea in order to maintain the price of Chinese porcelain.

He came to Australia and wanted to re-enact the scene in Sydney in the Netherlands, but under the strong protest of many archaeologists and people in the Chinese community, the Australian government did not allow Mike? Hatcher auctions illegally obtained Chinese cultural relics in Australia. So he thought about it again and again, came to Germany, where there were not so many Chinese, and found Nagao Company.

Supposedly, Xiao Yifei should be angry at Nagao's permission to auction off the artifacts that Hatcher "stolen". But this kind of thing can not be solved by national feelings, even Christie's, which once auctioned the head of the beast in the Old Summer Palace, is not still in the country with a lot of nourishment, and is also specially allowed by China to establish a wholly-owned auction company in China, even Sotheby can only have a joint venture with a domestic company, why is it a sole proprietorship.

The next auction of Nago completely broke people's stereotypes of auctions and set a series of records.

On November 17, 2000, on the square next to the Stuttgart train station, Nagau made a replica of a huge model ship in the exact form of the shipwreck of the Thai Star, and placed the 350,000 pieces of ancient Chinese export porcelain stolen from the auction, which were stolen from Hatcher, in various parts of the wooden ship.

Guests attending the auction were invited to board the gigantic model ship. 350,000 pieces of salvaged blue and white porcelain from FJ, China, including Yuan blue and white porcelain, Ming dynasty blue and white porcelain, and early Qing dynasty blue and white porcelain, which later broke world ceramic auction records, spanned nearly five centuries. What is amazing is that these mysterious stunners, after hundreds of years of underwater waves and sand, are still so perfect and bright as new!

These beautiful porcelains are all neatly placed in various parts of the hull according to the position before the water, and each part is arranged with beautiful professional docents to solve the guests' doubts. Listening to the wonderful legends about Chinese ceramics and looking at the mysterious blue and white porcelain from the depths of the sea, the temptation is simply irresistible.

Previously, although some countries in Europe also sporadically appeared in some ancient Chinese export porcelain. This time, so many Chinese blue and white porcelain were displayed in one auction in one place, and it really caught the eyes of antique dealers and collectors from all over the world: 'How beautiful Chinese China

is!’ (So Chinese porcelain is so beautiful?) ）

It is no exaggeration to say that this auction is a beautiful cultural show, which has reached a perfect artistic standard in terms of conception, pre-planning, scale and crowd effect. A record-breaking auction that took place in the next nine days not only changed the fate of his own auction house, but also changed a certain pattern of art auctions in the world.

Although the number of participants in this auction is unprecedented, due to various considerations, the organizer did not directly invest in advertising in Chinese mainland in advance, so most of the Chinese people present are collectors and speculators in Hong Kong, Taiwan and other Chinese circles outside the mainland.

What I want to praise here is that it is these Chinese buyers, who seem to have some kind of tacit understanding in advance, rarely bid with each other, and most of them sell at a price slightly higher than the starting price. It was because of everyone's tacit understanding that the total turnover of 350,000 lots in this special auction of ancient Chinese porcelain, which lasted for 9 days, was only 22.4 million German marks, which was equivalent to about 83.2 million yuan at that time. On average, the average transaction price per lot is less than 100 marks, or about 250 yuan. Someone actually spent more than 200,000 US dollars to buy 5 sets of 28 pieces of tableware in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, a price that is simply unimaginable now.

Although the auction was sold in large quantities, the profit was not ideal, so Hatcher did not make so much money. This is not where Xiao Yifei has a good impression of Nagao, what really makes him have a good impression is that after the Chinese buyers had a tacit understanding, Nagao did not take countermeasures.

Auction houses make a profit on commissions, which increase with the amount of money sold. Once the buyer has formed a tacit agreement, then the auction will increase the profit, and the general response is to hire a bidder to raise the auction price. If the offer does not go well, the auction house will even terminate the auction. Instead of taking these steps, Nagao allowed the Chinese buyers to continue to buy the fine porcelain slightly higher than expected.

In this auction, Nagao has achieved unexpected brilliant results, breaking a number of world records, making the originally little-known Nagao auction famous and famous in the world overnight!

By record-breaking, we don't mean the sky-high price of a single lot, but the overall success of the auction:

The overall packaging of the auction has set a record in terms of its delicacy and the amount of money invested in the auction from organization to planning.

As many as 35 lots of the same category were sold, breaking the record for the number of lots in previous auctions;

The sale of the lot and its poignant life story without far-fetched packaging breaks the format of previous auctions that "only sell goods, not stories";

The 9-day live auction broke the record of a single auction in previous auctions;

Breaking the previous record for the highest number of participants in previous auctions;

All 350,000 lots in this auction were sold, setting a record for the turnover rate of previous auctions, and was notarized by relevant international professional institutions as "the largest auction in the history of mankind", and its auction history record was recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Of course, this auction is not only about these good aspects, but also about this auction, which allows Europeans to re-identify the value of Chinese Ming and Qing porcelain. It was this auction that allowed other auction houses in the world, including Sotheby's and Christie's, to find new growth points.

At that time, with the bursting of the Japanese economic bubble and the prosecution of Sotheby's and Christie's in the United States for alleged price monopoly, the world art market collapsed and fell into a state of depression, and everyone struggled to find a new breakthrough. And this auction held by Nagau in Germany has made these auctions focus on China, which they have been ignoring before. Since then, auction houses from all over the world have come to China to pan for gold, trying in every possible way to break into the Chinese market.

As an aside, our country vigorously develops marine treasure hunting, and the salvage of "Nanhai No. 1" was forced by McHatcher.

Xiao Yifei is not interested in these porcelains, as everyone knows that the price of Chinese porcelain is now inflated, and it is not cost-effective to buy it. Second, these porcelains are all large-scale goods, and they are exported porcelain, which does not conform to the aesthetics of the Chinese people.

Xiao Yifei began to look for recent auctions of Chinese cultural relics on the Internet, and after checking it, he learned that next week was actually Christie's Asian Art Week, and there were three auctions with Chinese art, and the quality of the things in them was obviously much higher than that of Nagao.