I don't normally do these so close together but there have been developments that I wanted to update you guys on!
Materials:
We could have problems with white gold in the near future. I saw yesterday that nickel production has been halted after a 250% cost increase of the materials. We don't generally use anything with nickel however our base grade white gold is made with nickel. Currently the material is available but it is only on material currently available as the manufacturers wont be able to make items containing nickel. The only other thing that can replace that item is Palladium gold and the current cost of palladium is $2,842.00 per oz so the cost difference is significant!
Metals Market
Silver $ 25.42 Gold $1,984.20
Yesterday gold was over 2,000 and I suspect it will go there again today but we will see what happens. We are seeing an uptick of sales in solid gold in the last week. Probably because we haven't increased our prices yet due to our inventory being purchased at a lower rate. We will probably have to raise prices in the next week or two.
Shipping
Yesterday I placed an order to ship via UPS and paid double what I normally pay to have it shipped. ECommerce Bytes put out an article on their news letter about the current state of UPS rate hikes. I expect shipping rates to increase and increase a lot after the announcement of Russian oil yesterday. Our gas has been increasing about .50 cents a gallon per day for a week now!
Products
No New products but I did do a video on the new pattern band rings with bezel cups and raw gemstones!
