Chapter 46: Blind Bidding and Open Bidding

Chapter 46: Sealed Bids and Open Bids

Holding the piece of jadeite, Zhao Yixin stared at it for a long time before finally coming back to her senses. It seemed true that girls generally loved shiny things, and even someone as carefree as Zhao Yixin was no exception.

"Is this jadeite valuable?" Zhao Yixin asked suddenly.

"Not overwhelmingly so, but it's not a small amount either. If you want to sell it, you'd better consult President Shen," Yang Qi said with a smile.

Hearing this, Zhao Yixin immediately looked toward Shen Yuxuan. Although Yang Qi had said it wasn't extremely valuable, she still wanted to know its exact worth. If it was worth one or two thousand, she would keep it; if it was worth ten or twenty thousand, she would sell it.

"If Sister Yixin is willing to sell it, I will offer three hundred and fifty thousand," Shen Yuxuan said.

The price of three hundred and fifty thousand was slightly higher than the market rate. According to Yang Qi's estimation, this piece of jadeite was worth at most just over three hundred thousand. However, since Shen Yuxuan and Zhao Yixin knew each other, she clearly didn't want Zhao Yixin to take a loss and directly offered the highest price.

"Thr... thr... three hundred and fifty thousand?" Zhao Yixin widened her eyes, staring at the jadeite in her hand with sheer disbelief.

Three hundred and fifty thousand—how much money was that?

Despite her profession as a flight attendant being considered a high-income career, in reality, flying back and forth between the two provinces only brought in a little over ten thousand a month. After deducting necessary expenses, saving around six thousand a month was already quite good. Three hundred and fifty thousand yuan equaled five years of her savings!

Five whole years!

A flight attendant's career relied heavily on youth, lasting at most ten or twenty years. Five years accounted for a quarter or a third of her entire career!

"Sell it, sell it, sell it!" Zhao Yixin agreed without a single moment of hesitation. She was hardly a wealthy person, and keeping over three hundred thousand yuan worth of jadeite on herself felt too nerve-wracking. Selling it for cash was definitely the wisest choice.

Shen Yuxuan wasn't surprised by her reaction. Through her conversations with Zhao Yixin, she had long known that Zhao Yixin's family background wasn't particularly well-off. To her, three hundred and fifty thousand was an astronomical sum, so naturally, she wouldn't keep the jadeite.

While pocketing the jadeite, Shen Yuxuan cast a deep glance at Yang Qi. She remembered that earlier, Yang Qi had mentioned she might acquire another piece of jadeite. At the time, she had been somewhat skeptical, but looking at it now, Yang Qi's words had been completely true.

"A master stone-gambler!" At this moment, even Shen Yuxuan couldn't help but acknowledge Yang Qi's status as a master of stone gambling. The only difference between Yang Qi and the older generation of gambling masters was probably just a matter of experience.

Pocketing three hundred and fifty thousand yuan in one go left Zhao Yixin ecstatic.

"I'm treating everyone tonight," Zhao Yixin declared magnanimously.

"Then we won't be polite," Yang Qi said with a smile.

"You'd better be a little polite," Zhao Yixin said, recalling the hefty bill from noon, feeling a slight pang of regret.

At this, not only Yang Qi but even Shen Yuxuan burst into laughter.

In the afternoon, Yang Qi selected a few more rough stones in the jadeite market, though none of them were cut on the spot. The next day, after playing around for another half-day, Zhao Yixin left in the afternoon because her flight from Qingzhou had arrived, and she had to catch the evening plane back.

In the blink of an eye, the exhibition had reached its third day, leaving only one day before the bidding deadline. The jadeite consultants of various jewelry companies were busy evaluating the rough stones in the exhibition to prepare for the bidding on the third day.

Bidding was divided into open bids and sealed bids, mirroring the practices of the Myanmar Emporium. However, unlike the Myanmar Emporium, sealed bids were submitted on the fourth day and announced on the sixth, while open bids consisted of one hundred stones per day starting from the fourth day. There were thirty sealed stones and three hundred open-bid stones, bringing the total number of rough stones in the entire exhibition to three hundred and thirty.

As the rough stone with the best quality in this exhibition, Lot 88 was naturally the most fiercely contested sealed-bid stone.

"Xiao Yang, why isn't Lot 88 included in the list of rough stones you selected for bidding?" Shen Yuxuan asked in surprise, looking over the bidding list handed to her by Yang Qi.

The quality of Lot 88 was simply too extraordinary. Many jewelry companies secretly intended to secure this stone at all costs, and Shen Yuxuan was naturally no exception. With such exceptional quality, even if the entire stone turned out to be Glacier-variety jadeite, it would yield a profit; even if it were Bean-variety, it wouldn't result in a loss.

Naturally, such a stone was the primary target of fierce competition.

"To be honest, I'm not optimistic about Lot 88," Yang Qi said after a moment of thought.

Shen Yuxuan froze and quickly pressed, "Why is that? Did you notice something?"

"Not really," Yang Qi shook his head. His own skill in stone gambling was still at a beginner's level, so naturally, he couldn't explain his lack of confidence from a professional standpoint.

"It's just my intuition," Yang Qi said. "They say that when things reach an extreme, they reverse. That's the exact feeling this stone gives me. The exterior quality is too good, seemingly flawless, as if it has reached its absolute peak. Once it's cut open, however, it might not turn out well."

"This..." Shen Yuxuan smiled bitterly. If Yang Qi had given some logical reasoning from the perspective of stone gambling, she could have agreed. But relying purely on intuition left her momentarily unable to make a decision.

After all, Yang Qi's stone-gambling skills were far from low, and the intuition of such an expert was often terrifyingly accurate. Shen Yuxuan couldn't simply ignore it.

"In that case, let's drop it. Besides, many jewelry houses are probably competing for this stone. Even if the Shen Corporation could win it, the cost would likely be exorbitant, and the current Shen Corporation cannot afford to lose," Shen Yuxuan murmured after a brief period of deep thought.

Hearing this, Yang Qi breathed a sigh of relief. He had been genuinely worried that Shen Yuxuan wouldn't listen to his advice and would bid on Lot 88 anyway. If they won it and it turned out to be worthless, tens of millions would literally go down the drain—a heavy blow to the current Shen Corporation.

Among the thirty sealed-bid stones, Yang Qi had only marked six: three Bean-variety and three Glacier-variety, all valued in the millions, though their starting prices were not low either. Yang Qi had carefully selected four whose starting prices weren't excessively high, but whose internal jadeite held immense value. After all, as a jadeite consultant, the more profitable stones he identified, the higher his dividends would be.

Aside from the sealed bids were the open bids. Open bids were much simpler: direct bidding where the highest bidder won. In this aspect, it closely resembled a conventional auction. The only difference was that open bids had strict time limits—bidding occurred in rounds of five stones, with a three-minute window for each round. Once the time was up, the highest bidder claimed the stone.

Yang Qi discussed with Shen Yuxuan again, briefly finalizing their strategy for the open bids on the fourth day. With hundreds of stones available, bidding on all of them was impossible, so they had to be selective.

On the day of the sealed bidding, the shops in the rough stone market grew much quieter. Assistants and bodyguards carrying bidding documents hurried back and forth. Sealed bids allowed multiple submissions, but each new bid had to be higher than the previous one, with the final evaluation based on the highest offer. This bidding method tested not only the consultants' judgment of the stones' value but also their insight into their competitors.

Lot 88, living up to its reputation as the highest-quality semi-gambled rough stone, was naturally the focal point of fierce competition. According to the news brought back by Zhou Hai, almost every major jewelry company had placed bids on Lot 88, including the Liu Corporation. The only notable absence from the bidding war was the Shen Corporation.

"The Liu Corporation? I truly hope they are the ones who end up winning Lot 88," Yang Qi thought to himself, though he knew the probability was slim given the sheer number of competing jewelry tycoons.