Ruling the Historical Romance Novel as the Female Supporting Character-Chapter 81: Genuine Treasures Don’t Come Cheap

When Su Yijia agreed to buy the stamps, the old man couldn’t help but show a hint of heartache. He wanted to keep one for himself, but considering that eight cents could buy six pounds of fine grains, he had to hold back his words.

Su Yijia paid no attention to the old man’s inner turmoil and continued to browse the stamps. As expected, she found a stamp from twenty-one years ago that emitted a radiant glow.

Originally, it was part of a special set of stamps called "Famous Jingdu City Landscapes," featuring five representative architectural landmarks in Jingdu City. However, one of the stamps, which depicted a sunrise with brilliant rays, had printing issues and was discontinued. It was even recalled.

In the following year, they decided to reissue a stamp with the radiant glow. This stamp made amends for the shortcomings of the previous one and achieved a better effect in capturing the radiant glow. Due to its reissue status, this stamp had an extremely limited circulation, making it quite rare. The radiant glow stamp in the old man’s possession was likely the reissued one, making it twenty years old.

There was also a four-stamp set of the "Complete Victory" series on the stall, which was valuable.

"Sir, how much for these four stamps?" Su Yijia pointed to the set.

"Sixty!" The old man quoted a high price.

Su Yijia was taken aback. "That’s too expensive! The face value of these stamps is only eight cents each. You’re selling them for 15 yuan each, which is a markup of 188 times. Did you see that I didn’t negotiate for the first two stamps and think I’m an easy target, wanting to make a big profit off me?"

While 60 yuan was insignificant compared to 30 years later when they would be worth millions, the current price still seemed unreasonable.

"Little girl, don’t talk nonsense. I’m selling these items honestly. Although these stamps were issued only nine years ago, they were withdrawn and destroyed shortly after being released. I happened to fall into a muddy swamp and broke my leg on the way back. I told the people who came to retrieve the stamps that the stamps had been soaked in water and were ruined, and I had already thrown them away. That’s how I managed to keep them.

Nine years ago, there weren’t many people who would spend money to send letters, especially not during non-holiday seasons. So, there couldn’t have been many of these stamps in circulation. Your set might even be considered rare." The old man explained the value of his four stamps quite seriously.

Listening to his explanation, Su Yijia didn’t doubt it at all. In fact, she felt a sudden realization. No wonder these stamps could fetch millions more than thirty years later; it was because there were so few of them in existence.

However, it made sense. The stamps highly prized by collectors were not just old and historically significant. Most of them were misprints or stamps that were never officially released. Stamps that had been issued but withdrawn shortly after, like this one, were almost as valuable as those that were never released.

"In that case, I’ll buy these four consecutive stamps, and you can throw in the set with the radiant glow stamp for me, alright?" Su Yijia pointed to the other five stamps.

Among those five stamps, only the one with the radiant glow was worth more, but it was still just around 600,000 yuan.

"Sure!" The old man didn’t haggle with her and agreed directly. After all, he was planning to sell the other five stamps for only 80 cents each, totaling 4 yuan. The most important thing for him was to sell the four stamps for a total of 60 yuan. Haggling too much might make the girl regret her decision.

Su Yijia handed the old man 61.6 yuan and carefully placed the three sets of stamps into her shoulder bag. This time, she didn’t dare to store them in her personal warehouse. She was afraid that the people following her would touch her bag, trying to find out whether she indeed had the problem the man had mentioned. If they took away these stamps, she would be extremely upset.