Interesting write up on mammoth ivory

Thanks for sharing. If Mr. Foster gets $500 per mammoth tooth, I wonder, on average, how many mammoth tooth scales that would produce?
Also, I was interested in what kind of protection laws exsisted, but can see how hard that would be to monitor.
Good article.
 
As a young man I worked in the north a lot. You could get mammoth and ancient walrus ivory for very little from the Inuit. Mammoth teeth were cheap as well. I should have hoarded a few boxes full.
 
Well, I don't really sell any fossil ivory, but as a fossil collector and dealer, I have bought and sold fossil mammoth teeth, they are not as valuable as the article, via Mr. Foster seems to suggest. I generally see nice teeth at major shows for as little as $50 and I have a very large and nice molar that I think I got for $50 or $60, and not so long ago. Some of the teeth have golden pyrite in them as well, neat material and impressive when polished and fashioned into a knife handle, but not all that valuable or rare, ivory/tusks seem to me to cost a bit more than the teeth and I believe fossil ivory of decent quality is rarer than the teeth, but who knows.

I know someone well informed who told me that modern elephant ivory will soon be importable into the US again, and pretty freely, not sure how I feel about elephant ivory, I believe that many of them are brutally killed for the tusks, at least with fossil ivory, no animals were killed for their tusks, well, at least not by contemporary humans anyway... :)
 
Megalobyte said:
I know someone well informed who told me that modern elephant ivory will soon be importable into the US again, and pretty freely, not sure how I feel about elephant ivory, I believe that many of them are brutally killed for the tusks, at least with fossil ivory, no animals were killed for their tusks, well, at least not by contemporary humans anyway... :)
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Well, I AM sure that, while barely interested in ANY ivory as it is, I will not be buying dead elephant tusks AT all. If I killed the elephant, than it would be one thing, but I have seen too many mulitated elephant corpses to buy with clean conscience.

It would be like buying human skin lampshades. Cool, way cool concept, but where did the skin come from?:eek:

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
Kohai999 said:
Well, I AM sure that, while barely interested in ANY ivory as it is, I will not be buying dead elephant tusks AT all. If I killed the elephant, than it would be one thing, but I have seen too many mulitated elephant corpses to buy with clean conscience.

It would be like buying human skin lampshades. Cool, way cool concept, but where did the skin come from?:eek:

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
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Well, I know where a lot of it came from in the 40's. :thumbdn: If there's a hell, I have to believe he has his own special place and torment.
 
I did fly up to Kotzebue on Thursday and bought 250 pounds of ivory.One 50 pound piece is top quality blue.
You may be glad to hear this ivory will be cut and sold for knife scales and will be available at the Blade Show in the booth of my friend Ivory Dan of Beaver Creek Trading CO.
 
akivory said:
I did fly up to Kotzebue on Thursday and bought 250 pounds of ivory.One 50 pound piece is top quality blue.
You may be glad to hear this ivory will be cut and sold for knife scales and will be available at the Blade Show in the booth of my friend Ivory Dan of Beaver Creek Trading CO.
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I just saw this ak, I'll be sure to check it out :thumbup:
 
ak, do you ever get really nicely coloured ancient walrus ivory that that would work for either full tang or stick tang construction?
 
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