Chapter 487 - The Auction Starts
The auction was split up into three days, and there’d be different items for each. Naturally, just having an invitation didn’t mean you could participate in all three auctions. Only the most powerful families and the small number of celebrities were given the golden invitation card. The standard invitation card was red, specifying how many of the auctions the holder could join, effective on the day of use. It wasn’t uncommon for the normal rich families and most celebrities to receive a red invitation card.
They could attend the auctions, but the invitation cards weren’t as valuable as the golden ones.
Fatty Lai’s was a red card, but he managed to get his hands on the invitation card for all three days. The one delivered to Xuemin, on the other hand, was golden. He was evidently considered on the same level as the highest families out there.
The items being auctioned started off with lower tier items, getting rarer as the days progressed. The items on the first day may be rarities, but the starting price was usually around a few hundred thousand to 2,000,000. They never went past that 2,000,000 cap.
The second day’s items ranged from 2,000,000 to 5,000,000, and the third day had items auctioned off for over 5,000,000. The regular rich people could really only attend the first day’s auction, attending the following second and third days just for the entertainment.
As a result, most didn’t even bother trying to get an invitation for the second and third days, giving them to their interested friends even if they did receive the invitation.
There were different types of invitation cards, but there weren’t set seats in the auction hall. People seated themselves randomly, and the families on good terms would sit close to each other.
There were a lot of seats in the auction hall, and the attendants usually never even filled up a third of the spots. There was no need to worry about a lack of seats.
Lin Yi, Xuemin, and Fatty Lai looked for a less populated place and settled down.
People started constantly entering the hall a moment later. The houses had sent forth their representatives. It was common for the head of these families to be absent, sending others in their stead.
The lights dimmed and the auction stage lit up with light as a man around thirty years old walked out, silencing the audience.
“Welcome, ladies and gentleman, to the annual auction of the Yu family!” The man bowed politely after speaking, and thunderous applause followed.
“House Yu?” Lin Yi froze briefly, his indifferent face tensing up for an instant before returning back to normal.
“Boss, the Yu family is the biggest of all the powerful houses, and also one of the most mysterious. They just rose to power in the last ten years, but they got into the position of the dragon head of all houses with one leap!” Fatty Lai explained softly. “Always avoid crossing the Yus if possible. But, Boss, considering who you are… Heh heh, even the Yu family would want to get on your good side, wouldn’t they?”
“Hmm? Is that so?” Lin Yi smiled softly. “Who’s that guy on the stage then?”
“He’s Yu Haitian, not part of the core Yu household, just a branch of the family. But even so, he’s someone outsiders want to please, as he’s the person who manages the Yu auction by himself on the outside,” Fatty Lai said.
Lin Yi sighed before nodding, a smile on his face. “Guess there isn’t much opportunity to meet them.”
“Yeah, the Yu family’s a really mysterious bunch. No one even knows what it is they do, but they’re involved in a lot of businesses. The people they send out are never part of the main Yu family.” Fatty Lai shook his head, smiling. “Let’s keep watching the auction. They actually put our Pill of Life Extension and Toxin Cleansing out on the first day, the blind fools!”
Just thinking about the pill’s starting price of 1,000,000 pissed Fatty Lai off. 1,000,000 for a treasure like this? What a rip off!
“Ha, it’s okay.” Lin Yi shook his head. “The 1,000,000 yuan starting price exceeded my expectations. It’s never been proven or acknowledged yet, after all. You need to try it before knowing the effects.”
“That’s true.” Fatty Lai stopped dwelling on the problem after hearing what Lin Yi said. “By the way, Boss, just tell me if anything catches your eye. I’ll help grab it for you!”
“Alright,” Lin Yi said, accepting the offer. There might actually be something he’d like during this auction. There was at least one item that Lin Yi needed to take.
He’d seen the catalog for the auction. The third item was a tattered goatskin scroll, an old map. Naturally, normal people would see it as some ancient map, an antique that wasn’t worth much other than the appeal of its strangeness.
The problem was that the map was obviously just a small part of the map, not the complete one. In other words, it was both useless for collecting and without practical value.
Lin Yi would have absolutely no interest in the trash if it weren’t for that piece of a map he’d found in the shark’s belly.
But from the picture in the catalog, Lin Yi could tell that this was the same map from the one he’d found in terms of material, craftsmanship, and even the strokes. Naturally, it caught his interest.
“Would people fight for something like this later?” Lin Yi didn’t know much about auctions, or what people had demand for. He decided to show Fatty Lai the picture.
“Uh…” Fatty Lai’s eyes went wide open as he looked at what Lin Yi was pointing at. “No way, Boss, do you want that?”
“Why, what’s the problem?” Lin Yi frowned, not understanding what Fatty Lai meant.
Fatty Lai felt that he’d overreacted too. He quickly and awkwardly apologized. “Boss, in this auction, the earlier something’s brought out the less value it has, and the less interested parties there are. Of course, it’s possible that there’d be an underdog item, but to be honest I really don’t see the value of that little thing.”
“Ha, help me get it, then,” Lin Yi said, relieved. It’d be a problem if people fought for it. The item’s starting price was 100,000, and from what Fatty Lai said, this wasn’t really a popular item.
The first item was a complete virgin jade that hadn’t been sculpted before, an item that’d be the star in any other normal auction.
But the items here were on a different level from normal auctions. Evidently, the top tier families and billionaires didn’t really care about something like this.
A jade with a starting value of 1,000,000 was then taken by a CEO with a red invitation card, buying the item at 1,200,000. It wasn’t particularly interesting or exciting.
The second item was an item with a starting price of 100,000, a date with a celebrity who was auctioning the date invitation, a small-time celebrity. Anyone who bought the item could go on a date with the celebrity.