198 Gold Coins, 1 Captain.
What did this amount represent?
Put it this way: from the first issue of the "Peerless Ranking," the Qin family had only earned 150 Gold Coins. That was despite the "Peerless Ranking" being practically a profiteering venture, Yanjing's papermaking industry being highly developed, Yantong having eliminated most of the obstacles for them, and the Huiyao Four Guards, their big brother, standing behind them. Only then had the Qin family been able to take that much money.
Seen that way, 198 Gold Coins didn't seem like much. The "Peerless Ranking" was published twelve times a year, and would certainly be reprinted more in the future. Averaged out, wouldn't that mean the Qin family earned one Captain per month?
However, it was worth noting that the "Peerless Ranking" was a monopoly industry. It was also a decadent product that introduced advanced whale-spending concepts, the first disaster Le Yu had released from Pandora's box. It was a cross-era assault of internet thinking against feudal commerce, a super-profitable Newmoney. For comparison, they needed to bring in the Jing family's data. When Le Yu took over the Jing family, after excluding all those miscellaneous expenses, their annual net profit had been approximately 800 Gold Coins.
The Jing family was one of the top five merchant guilds in the Silver Blood Society. Countless estates and mines throughout Dongyang bore the Jing name. Even though they also had to spend huge sums maintaining their industries, they likewise compressed their operating expenses to the limit. The Jing family was a notorious major slaveholder, after all. In Profound Candle Prefecture, there was a widely circulated saying about them: The Jing family's slaves would not remain young forever, but the Jing family would always have young slaves.
The wealthy merchants of Yanjing might not actually