Reborn As Super Heiress

Chapter 713: Chapter 710: The Great Dragon Stamp

The Heavenly Eye was still open, and Huo Sining could clearly see the faint purple Spiritual Qi that was subtly emanating from the set of stamps in front of her.

Even without understanding stamps, Huo Sining knew that this edition of stamps was definitely an undisputed antique.

The Shanghai Postal Administration Bureau was an institution organized by the governing authorities at the end of the Qing Dynasty, following the illegal occupation of Shanghai by British and American forces and the establishment of their public concessions.

In other words, the set of stamps in her hand was over a hundred years old.

What’s meant by a pie falling from the sky? Even Huo Sining was at a loss for words; both trading the stamp album and buying the ivory carving of Guanyin had been acts without intent, yet they had led her to stumble upon two huge bargains in succession.

Setting aside whatever the ball of wax might have hidden inside, the value of the stamps in her hands was undeniably high.

Thinking of that swindler of an old man who sold stamp albums, Huo Sining was both annoyed and amused.

He was a classic example of throwing away a pearl and treasuring the box, holding something worth millions in his hands while choosing to trade it for a low-value Garlic-head Vase, undeniably losing a watermelon while picking up sesame seeds.

Yet Huo Sining was quite satisfied with her trip to the Imperial Capital Ghost Market, stumbling upon two big leaks—when luck was coming, there was no stopping it.

Although she was holding the stamps, Huo Sining began to worry again. She could hide the wax pill in her Storage Space, but she really didn’t understand stamps at all, did she?

After some thought, she decided to visit her master’s place. Upon reaching the Zhou Family, Zhou Shitao was polishing a Zisha teapot. Seeing Huo Sining enter, his eyes brightened and a few smiles appeared on his usually expressionless face.

Huo Sining was eager to know how much the set of stamps in her hand could sell for, so she took out the cyan sandalwood Xuan paper from her bag and handed it to Zhou Shitao, smiling sycophantically, ”Master, could you please take a look at this for me?”

Zhou Shitao was somewhat indifferent at first but was shocked when he caught sight of the stamps in Huo Sining’s hand—the Zisha teapot he was holding almost slipped through his fingers.

Zhou Shitao, who had spent several decades in the antiques circle, had seen countless fake Large Dragon stamps. Setting aside those made by re-perforating sample stamps, genuine ones, and printing products with stamp patterns, he had even encountered a kind of counterfeit that specifically duplicated Large Dragon stamps to pass off as genuine.

Back when he was just a treasure appraisal apprentice, a Shanghainese had produced a batch of counterfeit Large Dragon stamps and sold them as genuine, and many people believed they were the real deal.

Those stamps were actually hyped up to sky-high prices at the time, and a small portion of the samples is still collected by some as Large Dragon stamp variants, not realizing that later on, their authenticity was debunked one by one. In front of the genuine articles, those imitations were nothing but a joke.

Handling antiques and appraising treasures relied on experience, the more one saw and handled them, the more naturally one developed an intuition for distinguishing between the real and the fake.

Zhou Shitao hadn’t seen genuine Large Dragon stamps before, but as soon as Huo Sining took out that set, he had an instinct that they were real. Instantly, he felt a jolt through his body and his eyes showed shock.

The old man put on his reading glasses and donned a pair of clean gloves before carefully picking up the edge of the Xuan paper, fearing that he might leave fingerprints or smudges on the stamps.

After studying the genuine stamps carefully with a magnifying glass for nearly ten minutes, Zhou Shitao was absolutely certain that this complete set of ten stamps was not a reissue, not a commemorative edition, not a replica, but the genuine first edition of the ”Shanghai Postal Administration Bureau Large Dragon Stamps”.

”Where... where did you get these stamps from?”

The old shopkeeper’s voice trembled, his hands shaking slightly.

After the Opium War, imperialism established postal administration bureaus in some coastal cities of the Huaxia Country; in 1863, the board of the Shanghai Concession Postal Administration Bureau organized and established the Shanghai Postal Administration Bureau Post Office, responsible for sending and receiving letters from South China, Japan, Europe, and America.

Two years later, the first set of commercial port stamps in Huaxia was issued, which was the first edition of the Large Dragon stamps.

However, because at that time they were exclusively used for outgoing mail, they were printed in extremely limited numbers and were not publicly available for sale.

Although the Postal Administration later printed reissue Large Dragon stamps, compared to the first edition, their value was far less.

Finding a set with overprints was already quite difficult, not to mention a full set of the original stamps without overprints like those in Huo Sining’s hands, which were extremely hard to collect and one of the dream treasures sought after by countless philatelists.

Huo Sining didn’t understand the real value of these stamps, but Zhou Shitao understood it very well.

And because he knew, he felt such shock.

”These are from the stamp album I picked up at yesterday’s Ghost Market, Master, are these stamps valuable?”

Seeing Zhou Shitao’s careful manner, Huo Sining felt reassured; the old gentleman had seen a wide array of items over many years and had handled countless treasures, yet he had never seen him take something so seriously before, signalling that these stamps were of no small value.

”What? Are you talking about that album from yesterday?!”

Zhou Shitao suddenly widened his eyes, his gaze flickering with shock, embarrassment, guilt, and relief.

He had also handled that album, which he had pulled out of Huo Sining’s backpack himself, at which time he had scornfully remarked that the junk Huo Sining bought wasn’t worth a cent; little did he know that the girl would turn around and produce such a collection of rare stamps, which served as a resounding slap to his face.

Zhou Shitao felt his face warm up, but upon seeing such exquisite and precious stamps, how could he bear to let them go:

”These are the earliest stamps of our Huaxia Country, uncancelled, and incredibly precious!”

”You, girl, are truly lucky to have found these! I am indeed getting old, I can’t match the discerning eye of you young people! How much did the person who sold you the album charge you?”

Huo Sining shook her head, ”He didn’t take any money, I exchanged it for a Qing Dynasty blue and white garlic-head vase.”

In fact, the other person had even given her an additional thousand yuan, but Huo Sining dared not tell her master, fearing it would be too much for him to bear.

”Humph, that person must have been blind to think these things aren’t valuable, and upon seeing your garlic-head vase, deliberately deceived you, this young girl, right?”

Zhou Shitao, well-versed in worldly ways and human nature, smiled and tapped Huo Sining’s forehead, ”You know how to act clever, don’t you? The person didn’t recognize the goods’ value, so you just went with the flow, right? You’ve always been smart, you wouldn’t let such a big advantage pass without making sure you came out ahead!”

Huo Sining’s forehead was instantly covered in metaphorical black lines, Zhou Shitao really knew her; even though he was not clear about the whole album affair, he guessed the gist of the matter from just a few words from Huo Sining.

But she wasn’t going to admit that she had played foul; pulling a face, she sulked, ”I wasn’t the one who insisted on trading his things. It was that man who harbored ill intentions first and tried to cheat me out of my garlic-head vase.”