Business Profitability in A Business & Money Transaction

How much business profitability can you imagine there can be in a business & money transaction?

There are rules in various different businesses that determine it.

But my father broke all the rules, though he had never been a very shrewd businessman.

He used to deal in the rarest of the rare things. He was always in the search out for them.

Once he went to a junk dealer where he happened to spot a life-size head of Gautam Buddha extremely beautifully carved in jade shining in its rich green color.

He asked him how much he demanded for it.

The junk dealer demanded 10 dollars for the same. But my father would never pay as much as a junk dealer would ever ask for. In fact bargaining was a rule of dealing with the junk dealers those days.

"Which fool on earth will pay you 10 precious dollars for this worthless, heavy head that will occupy more space anywhere than the empty space itself is worth for? I am asking for it only because I am a fan of the Buddha. In fact you should gift it to me free appreciating my respect for the great man that this head belongs to." - that was the way he used to bargain with them.

After around 15 minutes of bargaining, the deal was finalized in 1 dollar for the jade head that my father brought along and displayed at a prominent position in his show room that was there at the best location of the internationally famous small town, which the people from all over the world kept visiting quite frequently.

What a business & money transaction and what a business profitability on both the sides! The junk dealer had got it free from somewhere, he later told.

Within a few days my father got a customer for the same who had often kept buying things from him.

The head was not only a very big semi-precious stone but also a real piece of art and more than that a rare piece of antique that could be traced back to quite far back in its history of existence.

The deal got finalized at a hundred thousand dollars for the same. The man who bought it was from England and he paid for it by a check of some (which I have forgotten name of) bank in London.

You can calculate now, how big a business profitability of this business & money transaction had come out to be!

The man took the head along and the check went for clearing, where it was dishonored it being a fake check not only in its account number but also in its print!

I was a kid then but even today I have not been able to get why my father had accepted a check for such a big sum of money. Might be he trusted the man full.

Whatever, but then he filed a report with the police and the man who was a fraud was nabbed near Agra. My father went there to identify him. A whole treasure of valuable stuff was confiscated from his custody, but my father's antique piece had already been done for - it being the most precious of them all!

My father incurred a loss of a hundred thousand dollars.

Or was the loss only as much as one single dollar that he had invested on it?

Business & money are the most fluid and unstable things on earth, and as far as business profitability is concerned, it can even go to as high a percentage as infinity!

I find it all very random that doesn't seem to follow any rule except for the rule of demand and supply that I consider to be no rule at all but only an eyewash resulting from our brainwash at the hands of our decadent culture on this planet.

Is this the way we play the game of life on earth? If it is, I find it to be a foul game.