Back in the United States, the flight landed in New York. Li Du contacted Cole and asked him to help find two outstanding jade carving masters. He wanted to carve something.
This was a piece of cake for Cole. Li Du was not short of money. He contacted two famous engravers from New York, and after hearing the price, they immediately rushed over to accept the offer.
So at the beginning of the New Year, Li Du was busy.
He had a small plan to execute. Finding a carver was only the first step. Then he had to prepare to go home for the New Year. In addition, there were people waiting for him in the warehouse auction and real estate bidding industries.
Bill had arranged a warehouse auction for him, and he had to attend it. This was a rare auction on the sea.
As the name suggested, the auction on the sea was naturally held on the sea. Li Du did not participate in ordinary auctions, but he was very interested in this one. First, it was new, and second, it was valuable.
In the warehouse auction industry, the top was the war auction. For example, after the end of the Iraq War, the US military retreated from Iraq, leaving behind a lot of supplies.
Most of these supplies were war waste and not worth transporting, but they could not be thrown away. So the United States Department of Defense organized a warehouse auction.
However, this kind of auction was rare. Even if it happened, most people would not dare to intervene. War auctions were controlled by arms companies, military contractors, violent teams, and some underworld organizations.
In addition to war auctions, the next highest value was the liquidation auctions organized by the United States Government Department of Public Service or Customs. Among the auctions organized by the Customs, there were container auctions.
Every year, there would be some unclaimed containers and goods in customs. These things would be gathered together for a grand auction.
The auction on the sea was similar to a container auction because the things auctioned were also in containers. When a shipping company went bankrupt, or for some reason a ship could not dock, and the goods on board became ownerless, the ship owner, the government, and the insurance company would host an auction.
This kind of auction was popular in the 1970s and 1980s. The first millionaires among treasure hunters came from this, and they made a fortune through container auctions.
However, auctions on the sea were rare. After all, it was rare for a shipping company to go bankrupt, and even rarer for a shipping company to abandon its goods at sea.
The last auction on the sea was seven or eight years ago. In 2008, the global financial crisis hit the shipping industry hard, and many small shipping companies went bankrupt.
At that time, there was a craze for maritime auctions. To this day, the Ten Million Dollar Club treasure hunters from all over the world took advantage of that opportunity to appear.
The difficulty of entering the Ten Million Dollar Club through a storage auction was frightening. But there were still more than 20 members in the United States. They not only relied on their strength, but also luck to be able to encounter such a large-scale auction.
Now, Li Du had met one.
Just this year, Korea's largest shipping company and one of the world's top ten shipping companies, the Korean Trade Group, went bankrupt. This shipping company had more than 200 container ships, bulk carriers, and liquefied natural gas carriers. Its fleet operated more than 60 scheduled and irregular routes around the world, transporting hundreds of millions of tons of cargo around the world every year.
With the downturn in the shipping market, the situation of major shipping companies around the world was relatively bad, among which the Korean Trade Group was the most miserable.
Although there were more than 200 ships, only half of these ships could be used for shipping. Of these ships, less than 40 belonged to the Korean Trade Group, and the rest were rented.
The shipping industry was very expensive. Maintaining a ship was much crazier than maintaining an airplane. Ship maintenance cost at least a million dollars, and if there was a problem and needed to be repaired, it would cost even more!
In addition, the cost of fuel for a long-distance voyage was sky-high. In order to maintain the safety of shipping, some routes were controlled by violent organizations, and shipping companies had to spend money to buy safety.
In short, the Korean Trade Group lost three trillion won, more than two billion dollars, in the first half of last year. It began to lose money the year before last, and the losses were even more terrible. Finally, it could not support itself and filed for bankruptcy protection.
The bankruptcy information of this kind of mega corporation was very secretive. They were listed groups. In order to maintain their stock price, the group had been pretending to be fat before filing for bankruptcy to prevent investors from selling their shares in panic. Otherwise, they were afraid that they would not be able to get bankruptcy protection and would directly collapse.
Therefore, when the Korean Trade Group filed for bankruptcy, there were still many routes in operation, and there were still many ships sailing on the sea.
As soon as the bankruptcy information came out, the Korean Trade Group immediately shed all pretense of cordiality and began to show the bottomless, unscrupulous, and shameless style of the Korean Underworld. They did not care about the ships at sea!
Previously, when these ships sailed, they did not fill up with oil and water at once. They all went to a transit station for maintenance and supplies.
When the Korean Trade Group went bankrupt, no one would give them money to refuel, water, and supplies. Just like that, some ships floated on the sea and could not move …
In fact, the Korean Trade Group could not be blamed for being cold-blooded. They really did have no money and could not even afford to tow the ships.
In addition, because of the Korean Trade Group's bankruptcy, most ports around the world refused to allow their ships to dock. As a result, there were still a large number of goods stranded overseas or in ports, causing large-scale delivery delays.
Due to various reasons, the Korean Trade Group now had 20 to 30 cargo ships stranded outside the port. Some of them were close to the port, and the insurance company paid for them to hire ships to pull the goods back.
Some ships were far out in the sea, and it was too costly to pull the goods back. In order to reduce the impact of delivery delays and financial pressure, the Korean Trade Group transported goods on some ships of low value, so the insurance company was not interested in paying a lot of money to deal with the goods.
At this time, the warehouse auction industry came in handy. The insurance company hosted the auction and invited treasure hunters from all over the United States to participate.
Those who could participate in this auction were not ordinary treasure hunters. The insurance company cleverly verified their assets, and those with less than one million were basically turned away.
Bill told Li Du that the auction was attended by members of the Million Club and the Ten Million Club, and it would be a competition between super experts.
Because the cargo ship was docked in the far sea area, Li Du could not do his homework in advance this time, so he had to conserve his energy and investigate the situation.
After the insurance company paid for the ships, the auction was held the next month.
They sent invitations to every participant in advance. After accepting the invitation, the insurance company would give them a code to go to their website to get information about the auction.
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