Rockwerks Lapidary Forum

I have been tossing around the thought of what is a cab really worth, in time, money, etc?
Let's go through (ONE) "hypothetical life of a cab. I know there are many variables as there are ideas, but I will just talk about "My" situation.
OK, I want to make an average sized Drop, full rounded, full polish, etc. Well, the closest (least amount of gas) place for me to get the agate for the drop would be one of my "secret" locations to get "Puma" agate. That is about a 60 mile round trip, or about $20 worth of gas. (at least for now).
Now in a 5 hour collecting trip I might get 2 pounds of Puma Blue agate. The agate has to be removed from it's basalt host rock with hammers, pry bars, chisels, well you get the idea. Very little is just laying around. So "If I were to add my time and labor for collecting the rock, that would be 5 hours, labor for 2 pounds of agate. $15 an hour is a very reasonable rate for professional services. So a reasonable total for collecting services would be $75/5 hours.
OK, so Far I have spent $20 in gas, $75 for 5 hours of my time = $95
So far the total for two pounds of agate is $95, that just gets it to my shop.
Now let's do some slabbing at 75-cents a sq in, let's say 50 inches in 2 pounds = $37.50
37.50 added to our $95 = $132.50. now keep in mind there will be waste in slabbing, so our two pounds is less than that now. Now I am guessing that I could get 10 really nice cabs/drops from the 2 pounds of agate., so 132.50/10 = $13.25
Now let's move to the trim saw, say 15 minutes on the saw to trim up our one drop. $3.75 for the one drop. This is added to the $13.25 = $17.00.
Ok, Oh you still want the slab made into a drop, well I will say 1 hour at the wheels, at a reasonable shop rate of $20/hour, or $20 to Grind, Sand, and Polish the cab. So that is added to our $17, giving us a grand total of $37.00 for the ONE drop. Now this is not even taking into account the wear and my wheels, trim saw blade, slab saw blade, polish use, etc.
Anyway, I know as well as you that an agate drop probably wouldn't sell very fast priced at $37.00. Well, This "Hypothetical" cab was sold for $15.00 and got a large complaint because of it. So technically I lost $20 on the cab, but anyone who works rocks knows that you will very rarely sell a cab for it's "True" value. My example above was using the closest, least expensive place for me to go get stock rock. If I go to say Richardson's, the gas cost at least doubles, going to Glass Buttes it quadruples. So as I said my example was the least expensive way for me.
As I said there are a million variables to affect the true value of a rock, above was just one tiny example.
What are your thoughts? Is $15 too much? The jewelry industry would not know what to do if we charged "Full" price for our lapidary work.
Just my observations.
TTYS
Dan

Sounds like precut slabs at $30 a pound are not too bad a desl.

I think it is worth a lot more than 15 dollars. However, we live in a society that is accustomed to "getting the best deal" even if that sacrifices quality and workmanship. So we all go to Wal-Mall and get the best price. What happens to quality? Well, Shop Vac make a special Wal-Mall vac. You can't even buy it from Shop Vac, you gotta go to the Wal. You can look at the specs on the shop vac site and see that the Wal version has worse specs than the Shop Vac version of the same vac! So quality manufacturers are forced to "dumb down" their product to compete.
How does that relate to cabs? Well, people can get cabs for pennies when they are made by third world children then that's what they think cabs are worth and it becomes all they are willing to pay. After all, if the Chinese can make it so cheap why does it cost you so much to do it? Must be a union cabmaker!!! So they don't appreciate the time that goes into it.
Anytime I have tried to charge what I feel a cab is worth I don't sell the cabs. I practically have to give them away to see any profit. Obviously I cab because I like it. It's hard to see how someone could make a living at it.

Excellent observation Joe. You are absolutely right. I don't think I have ever sold a cab for what it is really worth, but as you said, if I want to sell any then I have to lower my price. I don't really have a problem with trying to keep my prices around the norm, I expect that, but it urks me when I am looked as a big rip off, when I lost over half my money selling the cab that cheap. Maybe some jewelry artist should go shop for cabs at wal-mart. If they like supporting slave, (or nearly so) labor.
Dan

It's the same way with tumbling. I sell what I can of my output every year, but make about what it costs for grit alone. The key is in Joe's nessage: we do it because we like to uncover the beauty of stone. Very few hobbies produce a living income.

That's very true Ken, I would be playing with rocks even if I never sold another one. As Joe said people are just to used to buying cheap, mass produced items.
I know what you mean about the tumbling to, pretty much the same with all of Lapidary.
Dan

On this subject....I went to a Gem Faire show this last weekend in Hillsboro, Oregon and was just as disappointed at my first Gem Faire as I thought I would be. 90% of the items for sale were beads. Beads and then jewelry. Very few specimens and no rough or slabs to speak of. But I went just to check it out.

At one vendors display, there were ziploc bags filled with cabs of various sizes and materials. The bags were $5 each which means that the cabs literally cost pennies each. The quality of course wasnt great and I was explaining to my dad that they were mass produced in another country most likely.

I have accepted that my cabs will never be sold for what they are worth but for me I am comforted by the thought that what we are doing is helping to keep an art alive.

As far as pricing cabs, material rates high on my list as far as determining the price. Many of us dont hunt for our own materials, its purchased. Valuable materials such as opal, rare ones such as Agate Creek agate, or difficult to obtain any longer such as Nydigger plume are going to be priced higher than say common brazilian agate. But if I ever start selling cabs, I will probably have just a few price categories in order to make pricing easier for myself. Like maybe $10, $20, and $30.

I also work with stone simply because I love it. Selling something would just be an occasional fringe benefit.

Shan, Tucson would not disappoint you. I know it is a long drive, but it's a great winter vacation. And the rocks would make you crazy.

This is an excellent topic!

As a jeweler, I know that I can call about a dozen large gem houses and get fantastic deals on common stones. What about the not-so-common or stones that aren't as commercially desirable? Most of my customers are interested in diamonds, sapphires, opals, and the like. It's been quite a while since a customer wanted an agate set (although I love them) and the last time I touched jasper in the commercial studio was to string some beads.

In my personal studio I love working with labradorite, petersite, and anything interesting looking that I can get my hands on. Recently, my sources for unique faceted gems and cabs are primarily gem shows and eBay. I never know if I'm getting a good deal or if I'm paying too much. So usually, I just ask myself what the stone is worth to me (in terms of how much it appeals to me - color, shape, size) and what I will do with it (use it in a piece for myself? make a piece for someone else? sell it, and if so then where?).

Is there an article or chart available that discusses average prices for faceted stones and cabs or maybe even a range of slab prices?

Fire Mountain Gems has a fairly wide selection of calibrated cabs in a variety of materials.

The monthly Jewelry Artist (old Lapidary Journal) used to have a feature that compared prices of some common gem materials but they discontinued it a a few months back. It even compared some lapidary rough. Too bad they felt it wasn't useful information.
Bob

Thanks for the tip Bob! I have about 5 years worth of "Lapidary Journal"/"Jewelry Artist" that I see myself digging through in the near future.

I have a small number of customers, most do wire-wrapping, a couple do creative metalworking (or whatever the right term is for cast /soldered jewelry). They tell me that for them to offer stuff at a marketable price, the cab needs to be around $15.

So most of my average-value stuff is priced between $15 - $20. They actually purchase cabs < $25 pretty often. I rarely do calibrated, no way I can compete with the machine-made ones.

The most expensive cab I have sold so far was $45 for a Howardite.

But as you know I like working new materials, and as my skills improve I'm getting more expensive rock, some really quite pricey. The cabs are priced at the low end of what I think they are worth, and if nobody buys them, I still have them to play with.

Then there are some that maybe aren't fabulous expensive material, but are unique and beautiful, particularly well-done, and I love them. I price them at what they are worth to me to part with. Nobody has bought one of those yet, which is OK with me, I get to keep them.

So really it's win/win. My little sales help support my hobby, sold cabs go to someone who enjoys them, I get to tinker with great rocks.

It seems part of the problem is marketing. There is interest out there, but I don't have time to live life, cab, and continually hunt up places to market and do the marketing work. If we had one of us that was talented at marketing, I'd pay a percentage for help in marketing.

As far as Ebay goes, there are other auction sites, like ETSE.com, to promote your work, and I agree that child labor is lame, and it is lame as well that people will turn a blind eye to it for a cheaper price, but the key note here is quality and craftsmanship. We need to rephrase and say "professionally hand crafted". one way to make your cabs sell for high dollar is to fabricate your own "works of art" with them, or collaborate with a jewelery maker, Ebay makes it tough with all the junk that is offered, I am an aspiring jewelery maker and I will avoid most of what is offered on ebay, mostly because I cut all my own stone and gems. I do use ebay to buy rough, the trick is to learn a little German and use German ebay, hard to find stuff like Charoite is still obtainable there, Australian Ebay rocks for rocks, I am also an aspiring faceter and this has proved an invaluable source for stones. I think its a shame that mass produced cabs are available, it ruins our craft and makes it look cheap, polishing and shaping a stone correctly takes skill, and I believe that people who know this are willing to compensate you for your ability, also give a little history behind the stone,i.e, how it was formed, rarity, geographical information, stones have a plethora of history, Rock On!