Pricing system suggestions please!

“I simply assign a price according to how badly I want to sell it”
That’s also part of the problem! I don’t wanna sell rocks, I wanna buy more machines lol. I am still spring chicken enough to remember the rocks journey and triumphs. They’re not all a blur yet and I have my learning journey with sentiments attached to the rocks. I assume that changes at some point after tumbling a ton for many years like you said?

rockinronda I'm in similar shoes really although technically I can make what I need to sell, just much slower than it would be if I had a cabber. Which is my next goal, some kind of cabbing machine whether I finish it in a tumbler or take it to completion on the cabber. I ultimately also want to get into silversmithing but I really do enjoy working on the rocks themselves.

I was blessed earlier this year with an excellent paying job contract and I rewarded myself with a 10" trim saw and a 14" drop saw, both from Highland Park. It's at that point that I became fairly picky about what I kept in my personal collection and began looking for opportunities via estate sales and such. I do try to find rough and process things using my saws. The lavender calcedony I posted in the cabochon forum being one of them. If you keep an eye out, sometimes you get lucky but having an open mind on what you can make with what you have helps. Definitely in case of dealing with the mass produced stuff from Asia. I'm not against selling findings from companies instead of making my own, it's a time management thing at that point.

I initially tried selling some sodalite slabs that I processed from a purchase of rough and well... I've got too much sodalite in my garage now . Rookie mistake. I do plan on re-starting the slab sales but I have found that many of the folks that I do see doing well in lapidary have some kind of social media presence. Apparently the internet has a hunger for watching people cut rocks, who knew?

Shoot, sorry about rambling on that long. Lots on the mind about the subject today apparently.

    - Rob

I'm going to try to concentrate 26 odd years of being in advertising and most of the research I've done myself on this topic into this post so *crosses fingers*.

It's tough to sell things that don't necessarily have intrinsic value to the uninitiated public unless you can inform them or attract them with a high quality product. No-one is going to be able to give you a de-facto price sheet for rocks. You can't just say "oh that's malachite" and give it a price without seeing what other malachite is going for first. The best thing I've been able to do is what rockjunquie mentioned, figure out your costs, how much you want to pay yourself and research your market for that particular material. If you don't have that information, then do what they call market testing. Give something a month online and see if you get any interest at the highest price you want for it. No interest? Then you're either not marketing it to the right crowd or the price is too high.

My personal strategy currently is researching Ebay and Etsy before coming up with a price for slabs and even then you need to have a marketing strategy to sell things. Ebay has a promotion fee, I'm sure Etsy has one too.

If I were to write an equation for this would be: (Material Price + your time (arbitrary) + cost of creation of final product (cutting, polishing, electricity, materials) + sales fees + taxes + marketing costs) = lowest possible price for rock

You can adjust the last of the equation depending on the research you can find about what you're selling and how much competition you have at that price point. If it's too high then you have to look into another solution for your product. Unfortunately this is an equation only you can answer.

    - Rob

it all depends on material labor cost of the process

As long as I get my Red Ryder BB Gun, we're square   Hehehe

So these are the times folks! Ask ChatGPT and you shall receive! Have fun! 🤩

class TumbledStone:
def __init__(self, material_value, size, quality_factor, rarity_factor, demand_factor):
self.material_value = material_value # Base value of the material (e.g., in dollars)
self.size = size # Size of the stone (e.g., in grams)
self.quality_factor = quality_factor # Quality rating (e.g., from 0 to 1)
self.rarity_factor = rarity_factor # Rarity rating (e.g., from 0 to 1)
self.demand_factor = demand_factor # Demand multiplier (e.g., based on market trends)

def calculate_price(self):
# Base price calculation
base_price = (self.material_value + (self.size * 0.1) + (self.quality_factor * 10) + (self.rarity_factor * 20))

# Adjust for demand
final_price = base_price * self.demand_factor

return round(final_price, 2) # Round to two decimal places

# Example usage
def main():
# Example stone characteristics
amethyst = TumbledStone(material_value=50, size=100, quality_factor=0.9, rarity_factor=0.7, demand_factor=1.2)
quartz = TumbledStone(material_value=20, size=50, quality_factor=0.8, rarity_factor=0.3, demand_factor=1.0)

print(f"Price of Amethyst: ${amethyst.calculate_price()}")
print(f"Price of Quartz: ${quartz.calculate_price()}")

if __name__ == "__main__":
main()

Bwahahahaha! Touche! Nicely done.

“Dang it, now you're making me want to try it out. 😁”

Haha I figured someone would bite that’s why I said have fun 👍

I think it’s learning from itself cause I entered same text 3 times and each time it got more and more in depth such as adding competition factors. Pretty cool to play with and it’s free!