Amy Cliser
Mark Shipman
Amy Dalness
Molly Bell
Bernadette Bennett
Molly T. Bell
Eddie Bell
Shelby Chant
Heather Apodaca
Viqui Sanchez
Kevin Whitmore
Yvonne PadillaAs many jewelers, especially goldsmiths, may already know, May has been named “Gold Month.” Being from New Mexico, I usually prefer silver to gold, but I’ve recently become curious about gold and why it’s so timelessly sought after. The more I learn about it, the more intrigued I become…
precious metal markets
We all need to adapt to the shifting markets for silver, gold, and platinum. Find out what Rio is doing to make buying metals easier and more affordable…
The Studio team is grateful for all of our readers, and we’re proud that there are thousands of you now! Because most of you found us in the past few months, today we’re taking a moment to go back to some of the highlights of the early days of this blog, and some of our favorite posts that you might have missed. . .
I was 13 years old when my father first let me sit at his jewelers’ bench. I was so excited I can remember the moment like it was yesterday!
I was helping him bezel-set a diamond by tapping a punch as he guided it around the bezel. I asked him to teach me to set stones. To my surprise, he got up and sat me down to start learning the basics right then and there. As it turned out, it would be a long time before I set my first stone. . .
Back in 1979 the infamous Hunt brothers largely cornered the market on silver, driving the price from $6 per ounce to an all-time high of $48.70. Their scheme unraveled when the COMEX intervened, and silver rapidly shrank back down to more accustomed prices.
But here we are in 2011, and silver prices are once again whipsawing – trading at prices well north of $40, and then dropping $10 in less than a week down to $37 or so. But our current situation is different from conditions back in 1979, and while no one knows for sure, it seems possible that silver may have enduring higher prices going forward.
“BAM!” is what Emeril the chef says on his cooking show. And “BAM!” is what I felt when I saw the price of silver top the $30 mark on Monday. Lately, listening to the news has seemed surreal. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, has been quoted about “fears of deflation”. Yet here is $30 silver, where just a couple months ago it was half that price. What is a jeweler supposed to do?
Silver prices have recently topped $25 per troy ounce. It wasn’t so long ago that silver traditionally traded close to $6 per troy ounce. Like all free markets, the price of precious metals is based on supply and demand. And while the jewelry industry actually uses a small percentage of the worldwide silver demand, we feel the crunch of rising prices as hard as anyone…
