"Any other offers?
Going once at seventy-five; am I offered eighty?
Going twice at seventy-five, and"-- he paused, one hand raised dramatically.

Then he brought it down with a slap in the palm of the other--"sold to Mr.Silas Gregory for seventy-five.

Make a note of that, Jerry," he called to his red-haired, freckle-faced clerk beside him.
Then he turned to another lot of grocery staples--this time starch, eleven barrels of it.
Young Cowperwood was making a rapid calculation.

If, as the auctioneer said, coffee was worth seven dollars and thirty-two cents a bag in the open market, and this buyer was getting this coffee for seventy-five dollars, he was making then and there eighty-six dollars and four cents, to say nothing of what his profit would be if he sold it at retail.

As he recalled, his mother was paying twenty-eight cents a pound.