Christie's Auction House, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
After a while of crowds, bidders from all over the world excitedly filled the auction hall, looking forward to it, and making full preparations to raise their placards to bid. Some even shook the exhibition brochures in their hands, with a posture of determination to win.
Although the printing of the exhibition brochure was relatively rough, the exquisite porcelain did not diminish its brilliance, and still revealed the unique charm of the ancient oriental country. As the professional auctioneer took the stage, the bidders were all eager to fight, showing their number cards one after another, and within a few minutes, one or a group of items could be sold, and some of the transaction prices were even more than ten times the starting price.
Among the many bidders, two Chinese ancient porcelain experts holding "No. 1 cards" had serious expressions, which was out of tune with the atmosphere of the auction. Every time an item was sold, they frowned and looked at the exhibition brochure, calculating its value in their hearts, but they dared not to buy it.
Although the 30,000 US dollars in their pockets were not enough, it was not difficult to buy one or two pieces of porcelain. However, the experts who came to the auction site under the assignment of the Chinese Cultural Relics Department looked at each other and sighed, and finally did not win a single item. In a sense, this trip was "returning empty-handed"; but in another sense, it was "creating something out of nothing". As soon as they left the auction hall, an idea came to the minds of the two ancient porcelain experts: In order to prevent the regret of the loss of ancient underwater cultural heritage overseas again, they must form a Chinese underwater archaeological team after returning to China and use scientific and technological means to salvage the shipwreck in China! This is a long story. It turned out that in 1984, a British sea pirate named Michael Hatcher salvaged a shipwreck named "Geldermalsen" from the South Pirates. In the winter of the 17th year of Emperor Qianlong's reign in the Qing Dynasty (1752), the cold air was biting. A merchant ship dispatched by the East India Company, the "Godmarson", was loaded with porcelain and gold, and sailed from Nanjing, China to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Less than 20 days after sailing, the "Godmarson" ran aground in the waters of the South China Sea and sank in the abyss of the blue sea. The South China Sea is vast and boundless, and it is not easy to find the exact location of the shipwreck. However, Hatcher carefully consulted the archives and used the most advanced geophysical exploration and salvage technology at the time to find the "Godmarson" shipwreck and salvaged more than one million pieces of blue and white porcelain from the reign of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty. Just as the crew members hired by Hatcher cheered, he made a crazy decision: smash most of the one million pieces of porcelain, leaving only 239,000 pieces of blue and white porcelain and 125 gold ingots. To prove the identity of the shipwreck, he also kept two bronze cannons engraved with the abbreviation "VOC" for the "Dutch East India Company". This move was nothing but to create the illusion that "scarcity makes things valuable" in order to cater to the law of the collection market.
Later, this extreme act of stealing cultural relics and destroying civilization did win him more than 20 million US dollars in "rewards", and Hatcher became the "richest treasure hunter" at the time.
As an "experienced" plunderer, Hatcher calmly dragged the "trophies" to the high seas and hid them. After that, he obtained the auction license based on the international convention that "unclaimed shipwrecks are allowed to be auctioned" and entrusted the Dutch Christie's auction house to organize a public auction.
This led to the special auction of Chinese cultural relics in April 1986.
The unprecedented auction was also unique in the history of European collections. The Chinese Embassy in the Netherlands learned the news and urgently called the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.
However, the person in charge of the Cultural Relics Department of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage was soon dumbfounded. Whether it was international conventions, maritime laws, or my country's legal provisions,
there was no effective basis for accusing and stopping this matter.
In desperation, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage had to send ancient porcelain experts to Amsterdam...