Traveling through the sword to engage in military industry

#135 - Preparations for the Overworld

Main World, Jincheng.

Ren Zhong, who had just returned from Qiancheng and was preparing for a good rest, received good news as soon as he got back.

"Old Ren, good news! The mechanism for manufacturing retro silver dollars is settled. Here's what I was thinking: since you need so many, why don't we just buy the silver ourselves and make them!

I checked the price of silver, and it's currently over 6400 yuan per kilogram, which is just over 6.4 yuan per gram. This is pure silver, and after mixing it, about 89% purity is enough. The material cost for one silver dollar is about 150 yuan.

If we buy stamping machines to manufacture them ourselves, the mold and complete set of new equipment won't cost more than 2 million yuan. I found a second-hand stamping machine from someone who used to make antique silver dollars, and he's willing to sell it to me for 1.2 million yuan. We can still negotiate that price.

I calculated that if we produce 100,000 silver dollars, the machine depreciation will be 12 yuan per coin. Adding labor costs and utilities, the cost price will be at most 165 yuan. Last time you said you could accept 170 yuan, so we'll still have a 5 yuan profit margin per coin.

But if you need a million coins, the machine depreciation will be only 1.2 yuan! We'll have a gross profit margin of over 15 yuan! That's 15 million! It's so much better for us to buy the machines and make the money ourselves! Anyway, you said they're for export. The factory will be located inside a mechanical processing plant in Hong Kong, which will save us the trouble of import and export. We're guaranteed to make money with this business!" Liang Xiaofeng reported excitedly.

Ren Zhong was a little dumbfounded after listening. He clearly told him to find a manufacturer, but this guy actually took over the factory. And after listening to Liang Xiaofeng's calculations, Ren Zhong felt a little dizzy. What a money-making expert! He felt that something wasn't right, as it seemed like quite a few expenses were missing.

However, Ren Zhong thought again that he would have many more opportunities to use silver dollars in the future, and he needed to import a large quantity to solve the funding problem in the Bright Sword world.

Although importing these foreign silver dollars would inevitably lead to the suspicion of increasing the money supply in the Bright Sword world, this volume of one or two million per year shouldn't cause inflation in the Bright Sword world. Anyway, silver dollars, like gold, are hard currency in the Bright Sword world, completely different from legal tender, which depreciates almost every day.

Let Liang Xiaofeng do whatever he wants; he won't lose money anyway. He'll just settle with Liang Xiaofeng, this little "profiteer," at 170 yuan each. He wondered if he would end up losing money and crying to death.

The start-up funds he gave them were agreed upon, and their salaries were fixed. How much they earned depended on their business operations.

"Alright, Xiaofeng, you're quite the calculator. Do it according to your idea, but don't exceed 1 million coins per year," Ren Zhong said.

After all, his cargo-carrying capacity was very limited. Silver dollars are heavy, and he might not even be able to carry a million of them per year.

A simple calculation: one silver dollar is 26.6 grams. With a cargo capacity of 60 kilograms, he can carry a maximum of 2255 coins. Even if he carries silver dollars every day of the year, that's only over 800,000 coins! He can't carry any more than that.

Moreover, it's impossible for Ren Zhong to only carry silver dollars.

Therefore, in the Bright Sword world, Ren Zhong can't solve the huge expenses of the Dawn Project just by carrying goods. He still needs to sell some penicillin to subsidize it, or develop some new industrial products and sell them on a large scale.

But there's no rush. A million silver dollars won't go to waste. Ren Zhong's interdimensional trade isn't just for one year. Silver dollars will be hard currency for at least the next five years.

Besides Liang Xiaofeng's side, the businesses Ren Zhong has started are now a mix of good and bad.

Now, the MG3 replica has basically been developed, but Ren Zhong doesn't have time to bring the thing to the Bright Sword world for testing, so mass production hasn't started yet.

Ren Zhong gave Zhao Lidong some new business, which was to find complete sets of information and samples for the Japanese Type 41 mountain gun, the Russian T-34 tank, and the American P-51D Mustang fighter. The price for detailed core component manufacturing data was as high as 5 million or more (such as tank engines and fighter engines). If it was a real sample, the mountain gun could be purchased for a million, the tank for 1.5 million, and the P-51D Mustang fighter for a staggering 5 million US dollars!

If it's really impossible to get these, getting similar products from the same period is also negotiable.

This way, even if Zhao Lidong's mechanical processing plant can't explode in terms of production capacity, the price difference he can earn by sourcing the data for these products from overseas markets is also considerable.

In addition to these things, Ren Zhong also listed a book request list, asking Zhao Lidong to collect textbooks and publicly published materials on American aviation, machinery, electrical engineering, power engineering, electronic semiconductors, vacuum tubes, metallurgy, and chemical engineering from the 1930s to the 1950s, claiming that he was preparing to build an encyclopedia knowledge base.

Although Zhao Lidong didn't quite understand what these things were for, and in his opinion, there was no opportunity to form a market for sales, whoever made Ren Zhong the stupid, rich boss behind him, maybe he just liked collecting these antiques to play with. Anyway, it's all overseas, and it's not illegal to collect these things, but Ren Zhong didn't say where the final delivery would be, so Zhao Lidong didn't ask. He'll figure out the source of the goods first.

He is now almost permanently stationed in Hong Kong, and there are no obstacles to communicating with the outside world. He quickly announced his bounty. He certainly can't get these things himself, but he knows that spending money can very likely get it done.

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These old antiques from decades ago no longer have any secrecy value. It just depends on who still has well-preserved information.

As for the real Mustang fighter, Zhao Lidong also found some clues online, and he began to track these clues to see if he could buy one.

After Ren Zhong concentrated on handling the affairs of the main world, he continued his hunting trip in the Bright Sword world.

Second update, continue to ask for votes! Brothers, the new book is slow-selling, please help!