Grrrrf. I knew people in the jewelry world were complaining that prices were going up, but now that I'm paying attention, now the sticker shock is setting in
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There's still a *lot* of gold and silver in the ground, that's economically feasible to recover. Only one mine has reopened in my hometown, where there once were dozens that closed because the recovery price was too high. I'm a lot more concerned about things like tellurium, gallium, and indium. I don't think we have any hope that all the really high-efficiency solar cells and exotic semiconductors will ever hit the market because we're probably not going to be able to continue producing them. Everything's going to have to be based on silicon and aluminum.
This summer I'm borrowing a metal detector and going out into national forests on a mountain bike, to mine dumps that nobody's visited in 100 years, to see if I can find raw jewelry materials. It's been my dream for years to make a gold ring from the raw stuff, and now seems like an extraordinarily good time to do that.
Or diamond. We're getting closer and closer to being able to produce it at quality and in volume, and when we can, it's going to blow the semiconductor market wide open -- single chip microwave amplifiers running at 30GHz pushing 1kW, you name it. On the solar side, I'm not so certain, but I'm still holding out for solar-thermal sterling engines. They're going into production, and the efficiencies they're producing are at the top end of the market, without the massive overhead costs of semiconductor manufacturing.
much (let's pull a statistic out of my ass and say 70%) of the time, what's sold as "pure sterling silver" isn't.
and gold on electronics still seems sort of common it's just crappier gold and in fewer jointures. gold has some pretty awsome metallurgical features but you knew that.
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I'm a lot more concerned about things like tellurium, gallium, and indium. I don't think we have any hope that all the really high-efficiency solar cells and exotic semiconductors will ever hit the market because we're probably not going to be able to continue producing them. Everything's going to have to be based on silicon and aluminum.
This summer I'm borrowing a metal detector and going out into national forests on a mountain bike, to mine dumps that nobody's visited in 100 years, to see if I can find raw jewelry materials. It's been my dream for years to make a gold ring from the raw stuff, and now seems like an extraordinarily good time to do that.
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much (let's pull a statistic out of my ass and say 70%) of the time, what's sold as "pure sterling silver" isn't.
and gold on electronics still seems sort of common it's just crappier gold and in fewer jointures. gold has some pretty awsome metallurgical features but you knew that.
Reply
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