Chapter 321 Good Stuff
During this period, Jindou and Jinhu, along with Jinguan, the three brothers, followed Wang Yongping around to several nearby villages, asking if anyone had mountain goods to sell.
Wang Yongfu’s leg had almost recovered too. That day, when he suddenly felt pain during the water scuffle, and then it rained heavily a couple of days later, alleviating the drought, he realized the painful feeling Song Chongjin talked about that arises during rainy weather.
Now that he could walk, and knowing the agony of being unable to, he paid even more attention to his leg and, although he could not do heavy work, he couldn’t stand idling around either.
All he needed to do every day was stay at home, waiting for Laosi and a few kids to bring people who wanted to sell mountain goods, so he could assess their quality and estimate their price.
Fortunately, the skills he had learned from Old Master Wang hadn’t been lost. He seemed to have mastered the ability to discern the quality of such mountain goods, which he could tell just by handling, touching, and smelling them.
Initially, since he had never done this before and lacked confidence, he was hesitant to set prices, afraid of misquoting and causing the family to lose money. Hence, he kept dragging Wang Yongzhu into it, consulting her about everything.
Wang Yongzhu also felt uncertain at first, but she was prepared. Most of the mountain goods were always the same, and as for the prices, she based them on what Old Granny Zhang had previously sold and inquired about the market rates from Shopkeeper Wu. When Song Chongjin heard about this, he somehow got her a list of the current market prices for mountain goods in the county town.
With this information, she had a ballpark figure, and after some calculations, the prices she set were just about ten to twenty percent higher than those of other mountain goods traders, which was about right.
Since the market rates were still uncertain, she dared not set the prices too high. Plus, summer goods were definitely not as good as those in autumn, so the quality was naturally slightly inferior, and the prices were cheaper.