Chu Chen continued, "Actually, I think that if walnut prices rose to a certain level, another situation would appear, causing walnuts to 'shrink' in size. Of course, the word 'shrink' is in quotation marks."
Wu Ke found this strange after hearing him. "What situation?"
Chu Chen said with a smile, "It's very simple. Didn't I tell you before? Walnuts are divided into three sizes. For example, although 44 and 45 differ by only one millimeter, that one millimeter can make a huge difference in price. Some 'unscrupulous' merchants would take advantage of that."
Wu Ke said in surprise, "It shouldn't go that far, should it?"
Chu Chen chuckled. "The antique market is full of all kinds of people. Some people will do anything for money. Nobody does this now because walnuts aren't worth much, but if an ordinary pair of walnuts cost more than a hundred yuan, that might not remain the case. So although I can't say this would happen with absolute certainty, I think the possibility would still be quite high."
As it turned out, Chu Chen had been exactly right. As the market for collectible walnuts rose, when even a better-quality pair cost at least several thousand yuan, a batch of calipers really did appear on the market. Their quality was excellent and they had no measurement error, but the manufacturers had designed them so that when measuring between 40 and 50 millimeters, they were always a full millimeter off. They were calipers custom-made for walnut vendors.
If you encountered one of these calipers, you might measure a walnut as 45, only to take it home and measure it with your own calipers, finding that it was immediately reduced to 44. That loss wouldn't be too severe, but if a walnut measured 50 turned out to be