Reply #16: Oh, I remember in the 1980s when the Hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market

[Redstone]

and prices did spike, but they ended up losing their shirts. Served them right, the greedy bastards.

And gold at $1,000 an ounce and silver at whatever ridiculous number it got up to was just another bunch of greedy bastards at work, and I'm glad they got their noses bloodied as well.

What those "investors" don't seem to understand is that the VAST majority of silver production is used in industrial manufacturing, NOT for jewelry.

Hey, I don't have any links for you (they're on another computer), but have you ever looked into, I think it's called polymer-matrix gold and silver? It's a relatively recent invention from Kyocera, and is a matrix of gold or silver contained in something that handles like modeling clay. You carve or otherwise shape it, then stick it in a kiln (or use a torch) to evaporate the polymer-clay component, and you end up with a final product of pure metal, though it's light weight (because the polymer part is replaced by air) and you do have to account for about a 30% physical shrinkage from the heating process, so you have to make the originals larger than the final product.

Check it out. I looked into it a while ago, and if I had the time, the eyesight, and the hand steadiness I used to have, I would have bought some of that stuff to work with. Especially given that Native American jewelry has a strong connection to natural forms, it might be a good thing for you to do, because you can do things like press a leaf into the surface of the clay material and preserve that texture / pattern after you "bake" it.

I'm happy to hear that you're keeping at it. As I said before, you have genuine talent.

Redstone