Crazy stones III

The craze for this stone has reached a state that it is many times more valuable than gold and any other precious stones. People in China are willing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a piece of carving from this stone, even raw uncut stones can fetch tens of millions. What is this stone?

This is the incredible chicken blood stones that come from Changhua in Zhejiang or Balin in inner Mongolia. Very high quality chicken blood stones are those that are over 90% red. This redness on the stones is like blood from a freshly slaughtered chicken splashed all over the stones. Chinese like the colour of red as it symbolises good fortune, prosperity, luck and auspicious things. These high quality stones are usually cut into rectangular seal stones or carved into beautiful carvings by grand masters in the trade.

Chicken blood seal stones

Raw uncarved stones

Chicken stone carving by master





There are many success stories of how retrenched workers and ordinary folks found great wealth by trading in these stones. There was once a tailor from a poor family who become multi-millionaire after trading in the stones in the 1990s. He is a native of Qintian in Zhejiang (where Qintian stones come from) but he trades mainly in the chicken blood stones from inner Mongolia. The reason is simple, there are a lot of people engaged in stone carving business in Qintian but not in Mongolia. So all the good stones from inner Mongolia have to be delivered here for carving into artistic pieces (the market for these stones is in Qintian, Zhejiang). So in those years, he was exposed to lots and lots of chicken blood stones from Balin of inner Mongolia. The stones were not that costly at first and they were sent daily by truck loads to Qintian.   He was amazed at the beauty of the stones and he liked the redness that spreads across these stones. He knew that Chinese people have always like the auspicious red colour and so the stones could become a darling in the collectors' eyes. He started buying the stones in large quantities and trading them. In the beginning he sold the stones to Taiwanese (as Taiwanese were wealthy people) and reaped huge profit. He also witnessed the fact that the price of high quality stones had been increasing steadily. This was due to excessive mining of the stones over the decades. As resources become scarce, the price would definitely escalate up. Having dealt with the stones for years, he finally fell in love with the chicken blood stones and became a collector himself. He started buying back those stones he sold to his clients earlier in Taiwan. He also paid very high price in the process of collecting back the stones he sold earlier. He even sold his factories to consolidate his funds to collect the stones of the highest quality. He intends to have his own buildings in Qintian to showcase all of his collection.

 

A tailor who makes it big in chicken blood stones

Huge uncut raw stones costing hundreds of millions

Fresh blood splashes on the stone

How did a stone trader eventually become a collector?

He bought a chicken blood stone for 20 thousand dollars and kept in a safe. He moved house later and lost the key to the safe. Two years had passed and he got a welder to cut open the safe and retrieved the stone. His friend saw the beautiful stone and offered him 200 thousand dollars for it. He was amazed that the value of the stone had risen so much in 2 years. He decided not only to keep this stone, but buy any good stones that came by. It was said that there was an offer for the stone at 2 millions. As he grew to like chicken blood stones more and more, he went back to his old clients in Taiwan and offered to buy the stones he sold them earlier. He was even willing to pay a very high price for them, prices much higher than he sold them earlier. He became the number one collector of chicken blood stones.

The stone that turned the man into a collector

Owner turned down an offer for it at 20 millions

 

Carving by grand master, not for sale

Now, artistic carvings done by great master are commanding a very high price, some are even not for sale as the owners like the carvings themselves. If one wants to put a value, it can cost as much as 10 millions or even higher.