Silver and Gold

Irish Flute
1

Am curious how the current surge in Silver (and Gold) prices are affecting other makers out there.

If you don’t know, both metals have been surging in price as fiat currencies such as the Dollar, Pound and Euro are considered increasingly worthless. For years Silver hovered around $4 per oz. This morning the Kitco price is above $21.50 per ounce. Gold is trading above $1300 an ounce. I did one gold ringed flute once. Its not worth what I had to invest in it for this one flute to be able to provide such bling. I’ll stick to silver.

For the amount of silver on a flute it doesn’t seem that much of an increase. But to use it effectively one needs to purchase it in lots of 25 ounces or more.

I usually buy silver on the dips, save all of my scrap silver, and send that in to be rendered for credit at the peaks. Just sent off a bunch yesterday - over 3 pounds of it. Usually the day after I send it, silver crashes in price. Or the stuff I just sent in gets rendered, I get the credit - and then it adjusts upward some 20% the day after (if I had only waited a few days more). We’ll see this time. I sent it in at $20.50 but some of the alternative financial pundits or gold bugs are saying Silver is headed to $25 or $30.

I usually keep enough silver in stock to cover all of my queue, and then some. Some days I awake with l a lessened mental capacity (due usually to things like this last weekend’s 3 days and nights of workshops and concerts at DjangoFest NW. I make flutes for a living. I play Swing Guitar for fun. also the Galician Gaita) and do nothing out in the workshop but cut, bend and solder ring blanks together. So its nice to have a stock of 16ga sheet on hand, for such brain-foggy days.

Other makers respond…

Casey

2

Only this observation, Casey …

I get two main supplies of silver - D shaped wire to make into rings, and cast keys. They come from two very different sources.

The casting company I use is Australian. I like them because they have an alloy which is not susceptible to firestain, and they have a process which controls the hardness exactly to my satisfaction (too soft and the keys will be limp and could bend if maltreated, too hard and they will be brittle and could crack if maltreated). Their silver is Australian, refined as an impurity in lead (!).

The silver suppliers for the D-shaped wire is also Australian, but they get their wire pre-rolled, in amazing lengths, from a German company, who sources its silver from around the world. Despite the distances involved, the cost per gram of the German rolled wire is much less than the Australian silver.

There are probably lots of reasons why the German stuff is so cheap - the silver probably comes from countries with depressed economies, the German factory is apparently a marvel of automation, and economies of scale are on their side, compared to the small Australian market. It will be interesting to see how a price on carbon might effect all of this as our various countries bite the CO2 bullet.

When Australia’s first flute maker, Jordan Wainwright, showed a flute at the 1862 Expo in London, he used silver from Moruya, NSW. That’s about a 30 minute drive south of here. There were significant gold diggings at Mogo, 15 minutes west and Nelligen, 25 minutes NW. Perhaps I should be mining my own metals?

Terry

3

From Mogo, Moruya and Nelligen
to Jinglemoney …