Chapter 5 Antique Market
"Such a small box—wait a minute." Seeing the two boxes that could fit in the palm of his hand, Pearson first showed a funny expression on his face, and then suddenly became serious as if he thought of something.
"Are you sure these are really firearms?"
"I'm sure because both boxes were opened and inspected."
"Wait for me." After seeing Liang En's serious nod, Pierce immediately walked out from behind the counter, locked the door and pulled down the curtains.
Then he turned on the fluorescent lamp on the counter with an excited look, took out a pair of silk gloves from the drawer under the counter and put them on his hands.
"Let me take a look." Pierce opened the box carefully, and then his eyes widened. "Is this...a hummingbird?"
"That's right, it's the smallest mass-produced automatic pistol in the world." Looking at the surprised expression of his friend in front of him, Liang En also had a smile on his face, "I thought you didn't know this thing before."
"It is true that my family has very little exposure to this kind of stuff, but as a half-military enthusiast, how could I not know about this special pistol?" Pierce said, taking out a magnifying glass and some tools to carefully inspect the box and gun.
"——This is the 2.7mm caliber version, and it's a high-end product with nickel plating on the surface." After checking it over and over several times, Pierce put down the magnifying glass in his hand.
"But the production of this thing is only more than a thousand, and it has been a luxury product for the rich since its birth. How can you find it in a row house in the East End of London-"
"But that's the fact. The gun is right in front of you now." Liang En said with a smile and a shrug. "So you'd better estimate the price. As long as your price is not excessive, this thing will be sold to you."
"I'm very happy that you are willing to make me your first trading partner, dear Lawrence." Seeing Liang En being so open, Pierce also spoke up.
"You are doing me a big favor, because I have recently been trying to expand my business to the wealthy people in Kensington and Chelsea. And your gun can just help me knock on the doors of those people."
"But the problem is, I really can't spare that much cash right now." Pierce shrugged helplessly, and his expression suddenly fell.
"The ordinary version was just released on the market in London three months ago. It sold for 29,000 pounds at that time. The nickel-plated version like yours is probably 10% to 20 more expensive. In addition, the original bullets of Hummingbird One shot costs £70——"
"Let's do this, 20,000 pounds, these things are all yours." Liang En thought for a while and then reported an integer, then closed the two boxes and pushed them towards Pierce.
Liang En knew that the price of these things in the market was one thing, but whether they could be sold at that price was another matter.
And in his opinion, interactions between friends should be back-and-forth, rather than letting one party blindly pay, so after receiving so many favors from Pierce before, he should return some favors now that he has the opportunity.
What's more, based on the previous four years of contact. Liang En also knew that the Pierce family were people with a relatively high moral bottom line and were worthy of trust.
And this is an important reason why his antique shop has been operating in London for five generations and more than a hundred years despite its slow development.
"But what I can move here now is only more than five thousand pounds--" Hearing what Liang En said, Pierce seemed even more excited. "So you wait for me here for a while while I go to my father's place—"
"It's not necessary, my friend." Since he had decided to sell it well, Liang En naturally did it right the first time. "Give me as much cash as you can, and write an IOU for the rest. It won't be too late to give it to me when you have more money."
Fifteen minutes later, Liang En walked out of Pierce's shop with £5,520, an IOU and a metal detector.
Originally, he wanted to strengthen his equipment when he had enough money, so he bought the 90% new second-hand metal detector in the store. But at this time Pierce thrust the detector directly into his hand and refused to accept even a penny from him.
The reason why I bought this metal detector is to prepare for the next step of treasure hunting. Because of the differences between the two worlds, some famous historical sites in history have never been discovered.
Although considering that the world is different, it is possible that those ruins themselves do not exist. But at least half of them should exist there as in the previous life, but no one has discovered them.
To give the simplest example, there is not much difference between the "Homer's Epic" in this world and the "Homer's Epic" in the previous world, but Troy has never been discovered.
It was precisely because of this difference and the existence of Golden Finger that Liang En chose this path.
It’s just that no matter how ambitious your dream is, many things still have to start from the simplest. After all, archaeological work in this era has been very formalized and is no longer full of chaos and madness like in the 19th century.
With his current status, if he went directly to Turkey to find Troy, let alone gain fame and fortune like the original discoverer, losing his underwear would probably be the best outcome, and there was a high probability that he would even disappear from the world.
After shaking his head to get rid of all the things in his mind, Liang En drove his minivan straight to the Alfie Antique Market on Church Street.
In English, there are two words to describe antiques. Among them, "Vintage" specifically refers to modern antiques, which are often less than a hundred years old.
"Antique" specifically refers to items with a history of more than 100 years, which are antiques in the general sense of the Chinese people.
Alfi Antique Market is a long-established antique market that mainly sells "Antique" grade antiques.
Although it looks a bit shabby overall, abandoned shops can be seen everywhere. But under the dilapidated building is the largest antique market in the entire Greater London area.
There are about a hundred shops in the market, selling antique jewelry, furniture, oil paintings, clothes and other different categories of used goods. There are some treasures worth thousands of gold among them.
Many fashionistas, celebrities, wealthy people and even aristocrats buy their favorite goodies from here.
Naturally, Liang En didn't come here to pick up missing items, considering the level of local merchants who are extremely professional. Those good things should have been picked out by them long ago and marked with a high price.
The reason why he came here was that he hoped to figure out how to use his golden finger.
I have to say that this golden finger is indeed a good thing, and the results of its previous use speak for itself.
Unfortunately, apart from some simple descriptions on the cards, Goldfinger itself does not even have an operation manual, so we can only cross the river by feeling the stones and explore bit by bit.
According to previous experience, the power of Goldfinger is mainly realized through various cards. But the problem now is that Liang En doesn't know how to add new cards.
Fortunately, he had read a lot of novels about this in his previous life, so he could try out all the methods in the previous novels at the antique market to see if he could make any breakthroughs.
Unlike ordinary antique markets, there are basically no open-air stalls in the Alfie Antique Market. All merchants have their own shops.
So I walked around inside and had something to eat. Liang En found a shop selling miscellaneous antiques and walked in.