The items in the package seem to be children's stuff, such as toys, small clothes, books, and so on. And the target that is glowing is being pressed under this heap of stuff.
"Let's see what all this is." At this point, Leonard Ethan became less impatient, instead beginning to inspect the things inside the cloth package from top to bottom slowly and methodically.
Very quickly, a number of valuable things were uncovered. For instance, he found a well-preserved teddy bear toy from the 70s, which he estimated could fetch more than £100 if sold to the right person.
However, the children's fairy tale books weren't as valuable. Even a tall stack of them would barely fetch £7-£8 in an old bookstore. From the titles of these fairy tales, Ethan could tell that the collector had rather mainstream tastes.
At least over half of them were books he had read when he was a child. After he cleared away the items on top and sorted them, he finally saw what the buried target of his search was.
"A complete set of 'Harry Potter', and all kinds of setting collections." Seeing the items hidden at the bottom, Ethan immediately became excited.
Being a Harry Potter fan in both his past and present life, the items were absolutely enticing to him; and so, he naturally planned to take them home for his personal collection.
After all, these items were essentially mass-produced and reasonably priced. If they were to be sold, they'd only be worth a discounted price as second-hand books.
As Ethan stuffed these books into the backpack he brought along, the thick pile of books at the bottom of the parcel began to decrease. That's when he found the glowing target.
"Hmm, was it specifically wrapped in parchment?" Seeing the book placed at the very bottom of the package, Ethan became curious. It was the only book in the entire package that was additionally protected.
Using the small knife he carried with him, he gently cut loose the string binding the package. As he opened the parchment wrap, a Paperback 32-open, red leather-bound and blue back, budget hardcover book appeared before him.
The cover of the book depicted a red steam train and Harry Potter, wearing glasses, standing in front of the train. The top half of the cover said "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone".
Upon flipping the book over, the edge of the blue back cover had the image of a middle-aged man smoking a cigar.
"This can't be the legendary first edition of Harry Potter, can it!" As a Harry Potter fan, Ethan naturally had a deep memory for certain things. So, he immediately flipped through the pages and began to read.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, he found two errors that appeared in this version of the book. One was on the book's spine, where the word "Philosopher's Stone" was missing an "o". The other was in the item inventory in the book that listed the things Harry needed for school - "a magic wand" was listed twice.
More importantly, on the page of this book was J.K. Rowling's signature. From the signature, it could be seen that the previous owner of this book might have known the author, so they had her sign it when they first bought the book.
If the date on the signature is correct, then the signature on this book might have been the very first that J.K. Rowling signed on a published copy of her book.
Because the official publication date for this edition of the book was June 26, 1997, and the date of the signature on this book is exactly the same.
Bear in mind, during that time J.K. Rowling was a rookie in the publishing world, and there probably weren't many people who would take a book to her for a signature.
After Leonard had finished his analysis, three cards appeared in his mind. These were a [Detection (N)] and two [Identification (N)] cards.
Realizing that he already had six [Identification (N)] cards in his hand, Leonard finally made up his mind to combine them into an [Identification (N)] card once.
Snowed under the glow from the card combination as before, four identical cards transformed into a bronze card.
[Identification (R)]: In the journey of exploring history, merely knowing specific details about historic relics isn't enough to satisfy those searching for history; they naturally need to go a step further.
Skill card (one-time), consumes this card, the cardholder can target a certain historical item for observation of a period of history. This time cannot be broken down and lasts for a maximum of three days.
"This card is unquestionably a treasure." Leonard felt exhilarated as he finished reading the card's description because it meant he could catch some glimpses of drops in the historical river.
Never mind watching people in the past live normal lives for three days, a spectacle historians would fight for, if he were lucky, he might witness significant historical events or find some forgotten treasures.
After discovering this, Leonard took around ten minutes to calm himself and then continued his organizing work. Unfortunately, he found nothing exceptional on the shelves or in the cloth bags that followed.
Inside several of the cloth bags were empty boxes or messy clothing, and even the knots tied were different from most cloth bags.
This situation indicated something; when the original owner of the house had died, his descendants must have entered the room and took away some possibly valuable things.
And this might be the reason why the current owner of the room allowed Leonard and his team to take things away after accepting £2,000. They had probably already been here and taken away anything valuable.
While Leonard and Pierce were eating lunch and exchanging their findings, this point was further confirmed, because Pierce found many similar empty containers.
"I found a violin case, a box for a flute and several copper and silver-plated jewelry boxes." Pierce shrugged, "without a doubt, they were all empty."
"But that doesn't mean I found nothing. For instance, I found a box for videotapes that appears to be a rather good antique."
After finishing speaking, Pierce quickly swallowed his fish and chips wrapped in newspaper and headed for the door. He returned shortly, dragging a metal box adorned with bas-reliefs, except for the bottom.
"That's my treasure." Pierce patted the approximately 1m-long metal box, "The box material is copper and silver-plated. It looks quite exquisite so I want to keep it."
"Uh…" After carefully examining the metal box, Leonard turned his head toward Pierce, "Is your family not superstitious about funerary industry items?"
"How could it be? We Irish pay more attention to these matters than most Brits. For example, my father will immediately knock on a piece of wood with his finger when he sees a hearse."
"Then, I suggest you sell this item promptly." Leonard pointed at the metal box, "This must be a ceremonial coffin."