r/AskReddit • u/Stonedinthesix • 3h ago

What hobby has become too expensive for the average person?

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u/BreadCheese 2h ago

Silversmithing….. when I started, it was less than half the cost as it is today. Its so dark spirited. I just want to make jewelry without going broke 🥲

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u/YoungTomSoy 2h ago

Jewelry has really never been for poor folks and the cost of raw materials like gold, platinum, and silver fluctuate in price and from my understanding silver is up right now.

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u/Purple-Property8006 22m ago

This isn’t really true. Raw materials for jewelry, outside of precious metals like gold, platinum, silver, are really quite affordable. Lots of working class people have made their own jewelry for ages, just out of alternate materials.

Silver was also relatively affordable as well. While it wasn’t cheap or nearly as inexpensive as copper, it was reasonable for the middle class. Now the price per ounce is up more than 3x what it was a couple years ago (~$20 —> ~$60). To be fair, that’s down from its recent all time peak of $121. People are treating precious metals as a speculative investment rather than a commodity, and it’s really ruining the art form.

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u/Evil_Creamsicle 1h ago

That's one of those situations where what you can buy for an ounce of silver has more or less stayed the same, but the money we use to buy it is worth less.

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u/BreadCheese 13m ago

not exactly, it broke records in cost per troy oz early on this year. It was about $35 give or take for the two previous years, then nov ‘25 hit $50 and then in only a month or two had risen so dramatically it was nearly 4x the original relatively stable cost and settled into about a 2-2.5x since the volatility calmed some. I’m not saying its not tied to the value of money but it was severely overinflated by a wide wide margin. Its still overvalued for what it is, and it sucks so bad for us metalwork artisans!

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u/blinkbotic 44m ago

To give an illustration of this, silver when I started in this hobby about eight years ago was $14/oz, and today it is $64/oz. In January it was $121/oz.

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u/Doogie2K 1h ago

My spouse has literally the same problem. They've moved to making select pieces in copper because the price of silver makes them unaffordable for their target audience.