Off Topic What is the rarest and most expensive wood?

ron_m80 said:
I was going to say, wouldn't Cites regulated woods be rarest by the nature of the regulation?
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No. Cities woods can still be imported, they just require paperwork. I sell kingwood, cocobolo and african blackwood for about 15 dollars a block. All three of those are cities regulated.
 
No surprise really. I am still trying to figure out how Pakistani plantation wood got on CITES. :rolleyes:
Greenberg Woods said:
Yes. Every single one.

The idea being its rather easy to pass one off as the other, to prevent fraud they are all banned.
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Pink Ivory and Kingwood are right up there. I haven't priced box wood, it used to be a common wood for tool handles but it is so super rare these days I would say it was now expensive. Super dense like ebony.
 
Wowbagger said:
Pink Ivory and Kingwood are right up there. I haven't priced box wood, it used to be a common wood for tool handles but it is so super rare these days I would say it was now expensive. Super dense like ebony.
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Pink Ivory is really not that pricy. Everyone says its one of the most expensive, but I get offered pink ivory slabs on a pretty regular basis. I had a few blocks of really curly bubble gum pink that sold, but they were only marked at about 75 dollars each.

Kingwood as well depends on the figure. Pommel, curly or burly kingwood is incredibly pricy. But mid grade figure I sell for 17 dollars a block. Really not bad at all.

Boxwood is getting pricy mainly because of the pressure from turning. Good english boxwood logs tend to sell for about 10-15 a pound. Expensive, certianly. But ebony logs sell for about 25-30 a pound.
 
Greenberg Woods said:
Pink Ivory is really not that pricy. Everyone says its one of the most expensive, but I get offered pink ivory slabs on a pretty regular basis. I had a few blocks of really curly bubble gum pink that sold, but they were only marked at about 75 dollars each.

Kingwood as well depends on the figure. Pommel, curly or burly kingwood is incredibly pricy. But mid grade figure I sell for 17 dollars a block. Really not bad at all.

Boxwood is getting pricy mainly because of the pressure from turning. Good english boxwood logs tend to sell for about 10-15 a pound. Expensive, certianly. But ebony logs sell for about 25-30 a pound.
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Cool.
Sounds like I can get some boxwood from you ?
Not ready yet but in spring.
 
Greenberg Woods said:
Let me know if you need any non cities woods. I just sent off a bunch if masur birch, tasmanian and 5A walnut to k&g
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I’m always looking for figured mahogany. Luthiers seem to snap that up pretty quickly. I bought your saepele this morning. I’ll be buying tas Blackwood and walnut soon.
 
Willie71 said:
Will do. The guys at Windsor said it was because of changes in cites regulations. Those same woods were all under $50.00/bf last year.

I did my first order from you this morning. Nice selection. I’ll be doing a bigger order once I get paid for work I did in December (a bit over $4000.00). Being self employed is a feast or famine ordeal. We got confirmation on the payment this morning and should have it next week. We got by without that payment, but it was tight.
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They're just making a story for gouging you. Almost everything you listed except cocobolo is non cites.
 
Geoff Flato said:
They're just making a story for gouging you. Almost everything you listed except cocobolo is non cites.
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Wenge is currently Cities listed. But Willie71 Willie71 you are 100% being gouged. I would STRONGLY recommend you never set foot in that wood store again. That is commical price gouging. Paduak sells for about 10-15 dollars US a board foot for good quality 8/4. wenge is about 35. That is absurd.

100 a bf is good quality ebony lumber prices. Thats 3A koa prices.
 
Luthiers snap up a lot of the really crazy rosewood, maple, mahogany and lately, cocobolo and African blackwood. Lookswise, a crazy flamed out book matched cocobolo acoustic guitar back is the equal of the best Brazilian rosewood IMO. The only good news is that we need small pieces and don't care how the wood sounds, so we can live in scraps at time. But even scraps are very expensive these days.
Willie71 said:
I’m always looking for figured mahogany. Luthiers seem to snap that up pretty quickly. I bought your saepele this morning. I’ll be buying tas Blackwood and walnut soon.
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Greenberg Woods said:
Wenge is currently Cities listed. But Willie71 Willie71 you are 100% being gouged. I would STRONGLY recommend you never set foot in that wood store again. That is commical price gouging. Paduak sells for about 10-15 dollars US a board foot for good quality 8/4. wenge is about 35. That is absurd.

100 a bf is good quality ebony lumber prices. Thats 3A koa prices.
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I didn’t buy at those prices. I was pretty sure they were gouging.
 
jdm61 said:
Luthiers snap up a lot of the really crazy rosewood, maple, mahogany and lately, cocobolo and African blackwood. Lookswise, a crazy flamed out book matched cocobolo acoustic guitar back is the equal of the best Brazilian rosewood IMO. The only good news is that we need small pieces and don't care how the wood sounds, so we can live in scraps at time. But even scraps are very expensive these days.
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My first big wood purchase of my wood selling career was to buy 500 pounds of instrument grade cocobolo. The prices are steadily climbing though. Rosewoods are just classic. Every application that uses wood holds rosewood as one of the best woods in its field.

There is also the massive chinese market which I think a lot of people forget about. I have talked about this other places as well. The Chinese moneyed class has an insatiable appetite for rosewood. That is why they are CITIEs listed. They stripped South east Asia and most of Oceania of rosewood, and were most of the way through stripping Madagascar when they started to eye the rosewood stocks of central and south America. To limit the export and allow international protection of rosewood stands in the Western Hemisphere they listed all rosewoods as CITIEs so Chinese money couldnt completely overwhelm the goverments of these smaller nations.
 
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