Mike! Mike!
My .02 worth. If those doublets and triplets are any good, set
them in gold and charge more. I’ll bet they look pretty good —
I would guess that you are using good material — if you’re not,
don’t do all that work on material that isn’t good stuff, because
it really limits what you can get paid for all that work. I’ve
made a few doublets and triplets years ago and they took me quite
a bit of time. You can buy the crumby ones from overseas.
Currently I have some doublets made from thin seams of boulder
opal backed with, I think, ironstone. I got them a few years ago
for $1—3 /ct. They are now $8 --10/ct wholesale at the shows
and they are going up all the time because so little opal is
coming out of Australia now.
If you haven’'t seen it, there was an article in the LJ back a
few years ago written by Paul Downing about how to set opal for
durability that you should look at.
I think opal looks good in silver, but better, often, in gold,
and the gold just ups the price you can get. If you have really
good stuff you might want ot throw in a few melee diamonds and
then the thing would really be saleable.
Hope I haven’t offended you — on Orchid I see lots of
expertise but many people seem to be selling their stuff for too
little. I cast and set, but, man, if I did all that fabrication,
I’d want to figure my hourly rate. Hope I don’t start another
bug thing about "what do you charge for _____?
Regards,
Roy (jess)