Chapter 408 Auction
As for Su Maolin's case, the public security and procuratorial organs are still investigating it. Not to mention spending life in prison, seven or eight years is the minimum. Su Maolin is in his prime. If he is really imprisoned for such a long time, he will be almost 40 years old when he comes out. His best years have been spent in prison, and his life is basically ruined.
Su Xuezhen only has Su Maolin as his son. Although Su Maolin is not a good person and has implicated him, ruining his career, he still risked his life and face, asking for help from others, trying to reduce Su Maolin's sentence. It was just like Zhang Pei's reaction after Liu Chengyu's drunk driving accident.
Wu Qu said that after he returned to his hometown, he received a call from Su Xuezhen. "I don't know how he knew my number. He said on the phone that he was willing to give me 1 million yuan and asked me to write a letter of apology. I refused outright. My works were about to be auctioned. What if a piece of calligraphy was sold for hundreds of thousands of yuan? Would I still need the 1 million yuan from him?"
Zhou Budai laughed loudly, "Brother, I admire you, how can you be so confident! I think if my calligraphy can be auctioned for 100,000, I will be thankful!"
Wu Qu disagreed, "You are just being too self-deprecating. Your painting "Western Regions" has been hung in the state banquet hall by Vice Minister Guo. Are you still worried that your work won't sell for a high price?"
"Hush, keep your voice down. This matter cannot be made public before the actual transaction price of my work is known." Zhou Budai looked around. "Those big shots in the upper echelons don't like us to hype ourselves up by relying on their reputation."
If Zhou Budai released this news in advance in order to increase his own value, his works would be snapped up at the auction, but he would also seriously offend Deputy Minister Guo, his "Western Region" would be returned, and he would be blacklisted by those upper-class people who like calligraphy. In the end, Zhou Budai would not only fail to make money, but also lose his future.
The next afternoon, the autumn art auction will be held at the conference center of the Panorama Hotel in the capital. The auction is hosted by an auction company in the capital. The auction objects include mainly calligraphy and sculptures, a total of more than 30 pieces, among which there are no antiques or works of any celebrities, all of which are new works by new artists. The auction company released the auction notice online a month ago, introducing the auction items and providing buyers with online and offline registration channels.
In the morning, Liu Lan, Zhou Budai and Wu Qu had already arrived at the hotel. The staff of the calligraphy department of the auction company held a one-on-one "small meeting" for them, telling them the basic auction rules and informing them that the company's appraisers had set a reasonable starting price for them based on various surveys. This price could not be changed because the starting price had been written into the description of the auction items and printed into a book, which would be distributed to the buyers.
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Liu Man had three works in the auction, two versions of the Yunyang Ding and the woodcut Wuxie. Her first review work, "Mind like a mirror, free and harmonious", was mailed back to Suyi by the exhibition organizer because it was originally a gift from Liu Man to Suyi. He is the owner, and he said he would not sell it!
The starting price of the seal-carved version of "Yunyang Ding" is 90,000 yuan, the starting price of "Wuxie" is 85,000 yuan, and the lowest is the regular script version of "Yunyang Ding" with a starting price of only 35,000 yuan.
The staff member also honestly told Liu Lan that from a professional perspective, her regular script version of "Yunyang Ding" was rather immature and could be called a work of art, but it was still a little far from being a true high-end calligraphy work and had little collection value, so they set a relatively conservative price of 35,000 yuan for it. Of course, if Liu Lan was a real calligrapher, her calligraphy could be called an early work and would still be collected by collectors at a high price. This is its immeasurable commercial value.
Liu Lan's seal script works are impeccable. "Wu Xie" is Liu Lan's award-winning work and should have been priced the highest. However, because the wood of the wooden table is too poor, the table top itself has cracks, and there are worm holes and other defects on the table legs, the appraiser gave a price lower than that of "Yun Yang Ding".
After saying this, the staff member asked Liu Lan what her expected transaction price was.
Liu Man was very satisfied with all three starting prices. She only earned 50,000 yuan for "The Sound of Wind", and the remuneration for "Autumn Moon in the Han Palace" was originally agreed to be 120,000 yuan. Later, after she became the heroine, according to the agreement she and Lin Zhi re-signed, she could finally get 400,000 yuan. It is said that Fu Feiqian's salary was as high as 4 million yuan, and the 3.6 million yuan saved by the crew was just enough to make up for some of the losses in reshooting.
Liu Man told the auction company staff, "As long as it's about 50,000 higher than the starting price, it will be fine."
The employee laughed and said, "Your expected price is the most conservative one I have ever encountered since I started working in this industry. The starting price we set is already the lowest price, which is definitely much lower than the final transaction price. This will attract more bidders in the early stage. I have just explained the rules. The bidding step for your first two works is 8,000 yuan, and the bidding step for the last one is 2,000 yuan. Before the deadline yesterday, there were 1,043 bidders registered online and offline in our company, and 5% of them paid a deposit for your work, which means that at least 50 people will definitely participate in the auction."
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