Off Topic Ivory

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kvaughn

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I'm not a knifemaker but thought someone here might have some info concerning elephant ivory as I know it was popular at one time for custom knives.
From the estate of a my father I acquired the end of a tusk. Approx 16" long and 2 1/2"-4" though the oval cross section. It came from Thailand in the early 70's and was cut off the end of the tusk to accommodate an elephant used in log work I was told. For symmetry I suppose.
I know the market on ivory is pretty much non existent due to regs and bans. I have no provenance on it other than verbal
Can anyone enlighten me as to the current laws. Possibilities for use other than a curio?
Thanx a bunch--KV
 
There are a few Grey areas in those Regs & the smartest thing to do it just keep it on the shelf in memory of your father. I personally wouldn’t want to deal with F&G and possibly get in real trouble for selling, Transporting, Blah Blah??
 
yeah without having any ability to show it was from an elephant alive before the ban in the 70's, along with proof it was brought into country before the ban its pretty risky these days. I feel for ya on this aspect. My grandfather had a Philippines ceremonial sword from the mid 1800's that i now have, with a HUGE piece of Asian elephant ivory on it. Prior to my states full on ban, it was appraised at $10k roughly. Been told it's pretty much the best example ever seen. Now it's worth nada. Not that i ever plan on selling it, but it was nice to know i had 10k slowly gaining value as an emergency fund if ever it was needed. Now i can either give it to family, or donate it to a museum, and that's it. I looked into seeing if i could find a way to show it was legit, but now even that won't work with how crazy my state went.

Don't get me wrong, i think the ivory trade needed to be banned, it was the right thing to do. Anyone dealing with new ivory should be shot on sight. But this thing is at a minimum 160 years old at this point, and easily proven to be a good century older than the ban in the 70's... To have this get singled out, meanwhile my state gave exemptions to antique musical instruments(e.g. piano keys) is total BS. You can still sell a ivory keyed piano made as recently as the early 70's. but my 160 year old sword is contraband... makes no sense at all. lot of old historic stuff is going to get lost, forgotten, or destroyed due to laws like this. Give people the opportunity to show it's old as dirt at least.
 
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Honestly? Just keep it on the shelf. Anyone holding elephant ivory is pretty well stuck with it, unless you're willing to step over on the wrong side of the law, which I would not recommend. USFWS has no sense of humor about this, and that's not even considering state laws.
 
Shelf it is then. My dad made a nice hardwood stand for it. I don't want to sell it but thought I might have a knife made with a piece of it to hand down to my son.
Thanx for the opinions and info. The regs seem pretty much open to interpretation. Scary when dealing with the government.--KV
 
Aidenag said:
yeah without having any ability to show it was from an elephant alive before the ban in the 70's, along with proof it was brought into country before the ban its pretty risky these days. I feel for ya on this aspect. My grandfather had a Philippines ceremonial sword from the mid 1800's that i now have, with a HUGE piece of Asian elephant ivory on it. Prior to my states full on ban, it was appraised at $10k roughly. Been told it's pretty much the best example ever seen. Now it's worth nada. Not that i ever plan on selling it, but it was nice to know i had 10k slowly gaining value as an emergency fund if ever it was needed. Now i can either give it to family, or donate it to a museum, and that's it. I looked into seeing if i could find a way to show it was legit, but now even that won't work with how crazy my state went.

Don't get me wrong, i think the ivory trade needed to be banned, it was the right thing to do. Anyone dealing with new ivory should be shot on sight. But this thing is at a minimum 160 years old at this point, and easily proven to be a good century older than the ban in the 70's... To have this get singled out, meanwhile my state gave exemptions to antique musical instruments(e.g. piano keys) is total BS. You can still sell a ivory keyed piano made as recently as the early 70's. but my 160 year old sword is contraband... makes no sense at all. lot of old historic stuff is going to get lost, forgotten, or destroyed due to laws like this. Give people the opportunity to show it's old as dirt at least.
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I don’t think it should have been banned at all. I think it should have been regulated differently. It would have been an amazing source of Income for the country’s that have ivory. Now it just sits in warehouses over there and is good for nothing. Don’t get me wrong I’m 100% against poaching and think it’s wrong to kill one just for the ivory. But what about all the elephants that are killed legally or the ones that are culled. Thy are not rare or some super endangered species. Thy have even tried to go after mammoth ivory, yeah don’t want to endanger them.
 
Banning stuff accomplishes NOTHING. All we Americans need to do is look at Prohibition and alcohol. Did that stop the creation and sale of alcohol? Of course not!

Neither has the ivory ban stopped poaching. I've read some articles that propose the ban has INCREASED poaching.

I'm in CA, I can't even get FOSSIL ivory. Think about that. "we want to protect elephants, so you can't have 10,000 year old mammoth ivory.....
 
I get the difficulty in authenticating pre-ban vs after and elephant ivory against other types so on one level I understand the wish to outright ban however I agree with JTknives JTknives that the problem isn't the ivory or use of it the problem is in how it is obtained and regulations can answer to that even if it does drive up cost, though considering the current cost of ivory if you are located in a place it can be bought and sold I would suspect a growth in supply would reduce the added cost for demand allowing a balance between a rise in cost of business to address the regulations
 
JTknives said:
I don’t think it should have been banned at all. I think it should have been regulated differently. It would have been an amazing source of Income for the country’s that have ivory. Now it just sits in warehouses over there and is good for nothing. Don’t get me wrong I’m 100% against poaching and think it’s wrong to kill one just for the ivory. But what about all the elephants that are killed legally or the ones that are culled. Thy are not rare or some super endangered species. Thy have even tried to go after mammoth ivory, yeah don’t want to endanger them.
Click to expand...

They may not be "rare" yet, but the rate their numbers are decreasing makes them vulnerable to becoming endangered very quickly. late 1800's estimates were somewhere around 20-25 million alive in Africa. In the 1970's before the ban went into effect they were down to 1.3 million.... Now right around 700k. So, pre ban something around 2 million were being killed per decade.So, since the 70's ban and conservation efforts, only 600k lost over 50 years. Is it perfect? Nope, but its ALREADY shown to be working at slowing the loss and not just by a little bit, but by leaps and bounds. Did it stop it? no, but it's done more good than anything else has to keep elephants alive. If that ban in the 70's hadn't happened, we would only be seeing elephants in zoo's in 2020...

As to the economic gains for nations with elephants, that's the weakest reason possible in all honesty. 700k elephants left alive.. If hunters paid $50,000(which last i heard is about the price range for hunting one) for EVERY single elephant alive in Africa, it would only amount to $3.5 billion. Which is next to nothing when you compare it to the yearly GDP of Africa at $2.2 trillion. Not even a drop in the bucket. Even with the tourism dollars, lodging, sale of the ivory, leather etc. It's just not that much. FAR more money is made by nations that offer tours for photographers, naturalists, or just curious people wanting to see them in the wild. Neighbor sunk $65k on a 3 week tour of Kruger national park last summer as an example of why keepin em alive makes more money.
 
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