The dumping shop was actually the furnace room of the Qing Dynasty, and all kinds of disadvantages were naturally inevitable. Scissors cost money, greased with oil and wax, flat code, color promotion, and additional names. However, this is still tolerated by ordinary businessmen.
Within the scope. What’s more, it is not easy to open this kind of business. It involves money. There is no big threshold. You cannot open it with a hard background. You also need to have a strong ability to identify. Things like lead-filled ingots have a long history. Before it was broken, it was
It is difficult to identify. In reality, sometimes it is not possible to cut the ingot, and it all depends on the salesman's eyesight.
There are not many dumping shops in Guangzhou. The one with the oldest brand name and the brightest sign is "Jufenghao". This dumping shop is an authentic century-old brand. When Francois came to do business, they used a cross to pay the bill.
It is said that the silver cake was produced by his family. Not only did many large 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 facade of the dumping store is not big, and a wave of heat can hit your face before you even get inside. Although the gold and silver sales are done in the workshop behind the facade, it is actually only the distance between the front and back rooms. There is no isolation.
The effect of heat.
The counter of a dumping shop is higher than that of ordinary shops, but not as high as that of a pawn shop where you have to raise your arms to get up. First, it is to allow customers to see the scene of cutting and melting money inside, so as to avoid any disputes. Second,
To prevent strongmen from jumping into the counter and robbing money - so there are no tables and chairs for entertaining 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 is a little crooked, so he is nicknamed "Shen Gongbao". Although "Shen Gongbao" is not old, his eye for color is no less than Yu Nai's.
Father, he can tell the approximate quality of most silver just by taking a look at it, and it's pretty close to ten.
Shopkeeper Xiao Shen is busy at the counter. The business of the dumping shop is very busy. The silver is getting smaller and smaller during the circulation process, and in the end it becomes a pile of broken silver pieces with messy quality and weight. No matter whether it is accounting or payment,
It was very troublesome. So every once in a while, merchants from all over the place had to send the loose silver taels they received to the shops to cast them into ingots. The various loose silver taels 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 came to the shop and asked for help? This shop sells goods and is particularly self-sufficient in 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. Then 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 name on the silver ingot.
According to the rules, any silver ingot coming out of a dumping shop will be stamped 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 has never heard of the name on these twelve taels of ingots.
There were not many dumping shops in the society at that time. Needless to say, there were no small places where silver ingots were rarely circulated. Dumping shops were only found in large commercial ports and administrative centers. As for the entire Guangzhou Prefecture, there were only these dumping shops in the city and the administrative center.
There are dumping shops in Foshan Town, but there are only fifteen large and small dumping shops. Even if you look at the whole country, there are not many dumping shops. Therefore, most of the shopkeepers of the dumping shops can tell where the silver ingots are cast by identifying the font size on the silver ingots, and know where the silver ingots are cast.
What is 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 at it.
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Since the trade name is so important, there are criminals who forge the trade name stamps of well-known dumping shops, and counterfeit silver ingots have been a thing since ancient times. In order to maintain credibility and facilitate peer identification, each trade name has its own secret mark on the stamp, so that outsiders cannot see it.
, real and fake colleagues can tell 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 made by the same industry, the foreign silver ingots are either from the two capitals, or from Suzhou, Hangzhou, Hankou, etc.
They were cast in major commercial ports such as Jiujiang. Basically, shopkeeper Xiao Shen knows the names of these silver ingots. But this one has never seen them.
Unfamiliar font sizes often contain risks, so shopkeeper Xiao Shen has 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 brand name in the local area. It is probably dumped by a new trader from abroad."
"How's the condition?"
"Shen Gongbao" looked at the silver ingot, and the fineness mark on it was 935. This was roughly in line with his first impression when he saw it: the silver was definitely not of sufficient quality. When weighed on a stamp, the weight was exactly the same.
"Lord, if you look at this silver like this, it won't be a big problem for you to see the color." Storekeeper 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 was specially used to cut silver ingots. At that time, wherever silver came in and out, there must be this thing. This is a pair of scissors with a short blade and a long handle.
The handle of one side of the scissors is fixed on a wide and heavy wooden stool, and the other side can be opened and closed. "Shen Gongbao" holds a silver ingot in his left hand and puts it on the scissors' edge. He holds the scissors handle with his right hand and bends his buttocks towards the scissors handle.
As soon as I sat down, I heard a "clang" and 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 that it was a little "unreasonable". This was probably their intuition 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 investigate him, he can't afford to walk around. Just the reputation of "being wrong" will have a great impact on his reputation.
.
But when he said "there is a problem", the other party would naturally ask what the problem was. He couldn't tell.
"Shen Gongbao" thought about it and decided to call his father to come out. Then he called an apprentice and asked him to go away and call the old shopkeeper back.
Shopkeeper Shen wasn't in the store at all - he went out to visit customers. Hearing that there was money in the store that even his son didn't dare to judge, he hurried back. When he arrived at the store, he saw an official from Australia there, so he had to deal with it again.
Then I went to the side and heard my son say something like this.
Shopkeeper Shen took the broken silver ingot, closed it again and looked at the name 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 Mr. Cha, where did you get this silver ingot?"
"
Li Ziyu said: "This is the stolen property recovered during the investigation. I am 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 do know the origin of the brand name Sanjiangmao."
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, the circulation of money is also very developed. Sanjiangmao has this opportunity.
The location is convenient and the business is doing well.
However, "Sanjiang Shigeru" suffered a fire 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. This shop was destroyed
It was completely wiped off the ground. No trace was left.
Now that the shop is gone, there are naturally fewer and fewer silver ingots stamped with its brand name. Gradually, it completely disappears from the market. However, the older generation, especially the people around Foshan, still have the memory of "Sanjiang Mao"
Of course, shopkeeper Lao Shen also remembered this incident and recognized 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 after decades, silver ingots of the Sanjiang Mao brand reappeared, either because of the
Someone saved these silver ingots back then but it was useless - this is possible. It is not uncommon to store silver for decades or hundreds of years. But the silver ingots of the "old silver ingots" that have been aged for a long time are completely different from the silver ingots that Li Ziyu brought.
of.
The second, and most likely, possibility is that someone somehow obtained the original "Sanjiang Mao" stamp and cast a batch of silver ingots themselves.
"What about the authenticity of the quality?" Li Ziyu wrote down shopkeeper Shen's words 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 came out.
The collection of silver has almost stopped, and I followed my late father to see a piece of silver ornaments used by the nobles of the Dongman chieftains."
"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 Dongman 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. It is a secret method passed down orally from generation to generation by the Xidong natives. We are just doing business in Guangzhou, and we have neither interest nor knowledge.
I don’t have the ability to find out.” (To be continued.)