11 Of The Most Expensive Items Made In The USA | So Expensive | Insider Business

From handcrafted Steinway pianos in New York City and Copper River king salmon from Alaska to Forge Damascus gnomes in New England and Cuban link chains from Miami, we'll take you on a road trip across the US. To discover the stories behind some of the valuable

items

our first stop is the Stetson factory in Garland, Texas, where the iconic cowboy hats are still produced the old-fashioned way. It's a quintessentially American accessory that has been worn by the likes of President Ronald Reagan and Beyoncé. A Stetson cowboy hat is stretched, shrunken and submerged in water before it takes full shape, those are just a few stages of the two-day process that can make these hats so

expensive

that you won't find the popular Skyline style for less than $245. dollars on Stetson's website, that's small compared to this one. which will cost you five thousand dollars, but it's not just about how these hats are

made

.

Stetson is one of the few hat brands to have achieved iconic status. So what

made

Stetson so iconic and is that why these hats are so

expensive

? produce a Stetson cowboy hat. It is a complicated and expensive process. Production begins here in Garland, Texas, where workers turn fur into felt. Stetson says it is one of the few cowboy hat makers in the U.S. that makes hat bodies from scratch, meaning it buys its own raw hides and processes them. in felt compared to other companies that buy pre-made hats with fur already Blended fur is the biggest indicator of quality and therefore has the biggest impact on price at the fur show Stetson stocks furs from Portugal, New Jersey, Belgium and Ukraine, okay. natural beaver sunburn foreign emergencies the best beaver hats are made of natural beaver fur very tight fitting fur very durable fur good for all weather rain nice feel fur is not cheap just a pound of beaver fur can cost 125 dollars a Chinchilla fur can cost four times the price, now consider that Stetson only produces about two hats per pound of fur after mixing the different furs, the mixture goes through a blower that separates the long hair from the down.

Stetson uses lint because it produces a stronger felt than the machines in the factory. The factory is crucial, but the work could not be done without skilled workers. The company employs more than 200 workers in two factories to guide the hats at each stage. Another element that ultimately impacts the price. About 100 pairs of hands touch each of our hats. From now on, workers pass the felt through several stages of shrinkage until the proper hat size is reached. Later, during the tilting stage, a worker helps create the crown by stretching and pulling the hat and then, while one employee turns the felt, the brass fingers of another machine push. the bottom out to form the brim, one of the last stages of hat body production occurs here in the forming machine, where the hat is immersed in hot water, an employee pushes down on the former and the half body comes out end in the conical part of the finishing factory machines. and shaping the crown of the hat, but the next stages require special attention, even when a machine sands the hat, again there must be an employee there to guide and feel it, the worker will decide when it has reached the proper thickness at other stations, the craftsmen use scissors. and pliers to secure the buckle detail, others cut and sew the leather strap by hand and then the satin interior lining.

No hat leaves the factory without a final quality inspection. All hats go through roughly the same process, but the premium ones have a few more. features that impact the final cost of five thousand and five dollars the Diamante Premiere hat is one of the

most

expensive cowboy hats you can buy it is made with two high quality chinchilla and beaver pelts, the gold buckle set of 14 carats that can add a thousand dollars to the cost of a hat quality is just one of the reasons why Stetson has the confidence to make a hat like this and be confident that customers will buy it to understand the other piece of the puzzle, must date back to Stetson's beginnings more than 150 years ago.

Years ago, Stetson founder John Batterson is often credited with inventing the modern cowboy hat and setting the precedent for what the style should be. There are many replicas of the Burberry trench coat, but they were the originals and in some ways set the industry standard. that specific product and I think Stetson has also done very similar things where they've set a precedent with, you know, celebrities, politicians wearing the hat and giving it that added value of yes, this is a luxury piece of late nineteenth century. Sniper Annie. Oakley became one of the first famous figures to don the hat;

In fact, in 2012, a Stetson hat worn by Oakley sold at auction for just over seventeen thousand dollars. While Stetson experienced a decline in popularity in the '60s, demand rebounded in the early '80s. release of the Indiana Jones films, the hat found its way to the heads of other famous figures such as President Ronald Reagan around this time as well, but by the 21st century, the type of famous face who wore a Stetson had changed. Dua lipa's 2021 video for love opens again on a shot of a floating Stetson, then a shot of the singer looking elegant and seductive while wearing the hat and here are two more notable examples showing how Stetson has been linked with a high status; there's Gigi Hadid holding a Stetson hat in this Vogue shoe in 2018 and Three years later, Beyoncé wearing a Stetson on the cover of Harper's Bazaar in September 2021, both demonstrate once again how the brand has evolved into something worth being Worn by the biggest names in the world.

If you idolize those musicians you'll want to use the brands they use, it takes about 11 months to make just one Steinway and Sons grand piano and these instruments aren't cheap. A Model D concert piano in ebony, the

most

affordable finish of any Steinway piano, will cost you about $187,000, but that's not even close. how high prices can go Steinway has produced two of the most expensive pianos in the world worth more than two million dollars each. The next most expensive piano is half the price, $1.2 million, but with several other premium pianos on the market, is there anything over the Steinway one? sound that stands out and is that what makes these pianos so expensive, called the Rolls-Royce of pianos by the BBC Steinway has produced some of the most sought after grand pianos for over 160 years, it is the piano of choice for Billy Joel for a long time and many other professional musicians, but compared to other high-end piano manufacturers, it is often the Steinway sound that sets him apart as a performer.

I can use many different masks depending on the piece I'm playing. There are some pieces that you want to be very, very devilish. Know? a list that you know and at the same time lightness for them the creation of that sound begins here in New York, in one of only two Steinway factories in the world, each grand piano is between five and nine feet long and weighs between 540 and 990 pounds, often the larger it is. piano, the more expensive it will be approximately 85 percent of a Steinway piano is made of wood and one of the most important woods is used for the soundboard the soundboard is the lifespan of the instrument the soul of the instrument this is the Sitka spruce from Alaska this is the most expensive wood that we have in the piano and we actually get it mainly from the trees that are on the shady side, the north side of these islands, so they grow very little each year and that means that we have growth rings that are very close. together, not spaced Spruce is used in other tense instruments like guitars and grows in some areas of the northwestern U.S., but more than 50 percent of Alaskans are fed up with spruce.

The font does not meet Steinway standards, the wood must have a very specific wood. grain density and direction, which can affect sound quality. Steinway looks for straight grains close together no more or less 15 degrees from a 90-degree vertical grain. There's a reason he's so strict about it. That's partly why when you press a key. On a Steinway piano you hear a clearly long and sustained tone, thank you. The edge of the soundboard should fit snugly against the edge of the piano. The curved wooden frame of the instrument. The complete border is made up of an inner and outer border.

Some piano manufacturers put each of these parts together separately. But at Steinway, a team of craftsmen work together. Steinway says this method gives the piano a stronger foundation, reducing the chances of it breaking. Steinway uses Hard Rock Maple for both the inside and outside edge. The key here is to use wood that allows sound again. To flow freely some companies for example will have hard rock maple for the outside edge but the inside space to save money they will use something like Luan Luan is not as dense and hard as hard rock maple and when you have your sound waves .

In that soundboard, some of them are being absorbed a little bit more by that Luan than they would be by the Hard Rock maple. The constant touch of the keys is another valuable and unique element of each side piano. There are only two craftsmen in the entire factory who are trusted. By weighing the 88 keys on each keyboard, this ensures that each key is balanced so that a pianist does not have to use more force to press one key over another. I used to dream about pianos chasing me now it's not a problem, it's updated boss and listen you know I pay attention to what he wants, that's the key, pay attention and look at that hammer, that's the key.

Each key is connected to a felt. Hammer, when pressed, the hammer hits the strings to create the sound that a key should have. I don't respond to finger tapping too fast or too slow, so when I go to check the return it stays, you see a hesitation, it's not good, that means it will stay on the piano to see how fast that one is, which is too fast so Take this one off and put this one back on and he wants the small one you see so I put the small one on him you see how cute he is and that tells me what he wants so that shows you the difference.

We are all different. One of the most difficult jobs is the final inspection of the tone. The goal is to create a balanced tone across the entire piano by slightly adjusting the hammers as needed from note to note. We can soften or harden these mallets or hammers as we call them and balance the sound they generate. the string, the tone quality of the piano has many nuances, something that only an experienced ear can decipher if I take this note and then smooth it, in this case I will put a needle in the hammer to smooth it out and you will hear that change in tone, it is a a little bit smaller and in small increments steps that I can go through and find the notes that are too big too bright and narrow them down nicely.

I'm 58 years old and I started when I was 28, so that's 30 years and counting, I'm still around. Learning how to do this never stops, like the ways you can customize a Rolls-Royce car, you can do the same with a Steinway piano, depending on the special editions, veneers and wood finishes, the prices of a A single piece can reach five hundred thousand dollars, like these designed pianos. for Lenny Kravitz's Steinway at the piano Vault beneath the Steinway factory houses one of the most expensive pianos it has ever produced, worth an average of two and a half million dollars.

The price of a new Steinway piano increases about four percent each year. This is partly because The cost of Alaskan Sitka spruce is increasing at a faster rate than inflation according to Steinway, and as new pieces become more expensive, old ones also become more valuable. A Steinway piano can last several decades with the necessary touch-ups and restorations. A 1965 Steinway Model D piano is worth more than ninety-eight thousand dollars today, that is, more than 13 times what it was probably sold for, and although there are several elements that greatly impact the price, it is the musician who ultimately decides. how much the piano is worth to them.

This is a Damascus knife. Master Knifemaker Zach. Jonas is twisting a fusion of steels to create one of his trademark world patterns, but these unique walls are more than just decorative. Successfully welding dozens or even thousands of layers of steel creates some of the strongest, sharpest knives money can buy, which starts as individual layers of two different alloys transform into this seven-inch chef's knife that sells by seven hundred dollars, some of Zack's knives cost five thousand dollars and commissions can reach more than seventeen thousand dollars. So how are swirl patterns made?steel and why are Damascus knives so expensive?

What you tend to notice right away when you look at Damascus is that visual pattern and it varies from very, very bold and large layers to very, very fine and shiny layers and you'll see that pattern jump out at you and you'll see the way the Light plays with it and it becomes shiny and looks almost holographic. The blacksmith community sometimes refers to this effect as chatoyans or the shrine of a striking pattern cat's eye. Quality Damascus knives are known to be hard, but flexible and able to maintain a sharp edge to make Damascus steel. Zack begins by layering two different types of high carbon steel.

Managing the layers means more work for the Smith, and while high-end monosteel knives can perform similarly, Damascus knives are coveted for their striking appearance and the craftsmanship required to achieve it by joining the layers together. Zach places the stack in Forges and heats it to approximately 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit. He needs an experienced eye to judge when the steel is ready because he risks breaking the handle while the layers are not yet forged and welded together. Zach needs to consider the type of pattern he wants to make before he can start forging a bold pattern, which means there are fewer layers and a more complex pattern may require several thousand foreign materials and working with just as many layers to achieve his goal.

The intended design means that many things can go wrong with thousands of hammer blows. A single hit in the wrong place can ruin the pattern even when the pattern is made perfectly. Zach has to forge the steel into a knife without distorting the design and if he forges the steel when it's too cold it can crack and he has to start over, which for Damascus steel can mean losing a week of work once Forge welds steel into a long bar. Zack can start folding the layers, the number of layers has the biggest effect on the price, the more layers, the more folding and work for Zach, which means a higher price.

The pattern on this particular knife called Texas Wind has only 45 layers, which is why Zack sells it for just under a thousand dollars, but his most expensive knives can have 5,000 layers and that can take a month to complete, which which gives it a higher price so you can see I'm twisting the steel with this wrench it has to be very hot if it's too cold the layers will want to cut and separate and then the part is junk keeping track of the speed which I'm turning counting as I go. This technique is specific to twisting Damascus and creates star-shaped patterns in the steel.

If you twist it too much, the steel will shear, but the tighter the Twist the more dramatic the pattern and that will make When Zach is making a standard Damascus wave pattern, he continues to work on lengthening and thinning the bar using an electric hammer. . Zach's biggest electric hammer cost him twenty thousand dollars, but that's just a drop in the bucket. In the cube he spent at least one hundred thousand dollars on specialized machinery, but this large investment allows Zach to produce high quality Damascus knives. A Sac Ford is the tip of the blade, you compare it to your template to make sure the knife looks exactly like Now it should go through a metallurgical change which is called heat treatment and this part is hardening and without doing this, the thing It might be shaped like a knife, but it won't behave like a knife, it won't be sharp, it won.

It does not hold an edge, so the heat treatment is really a critical process and determines the metallurgy and therefore the performance of the finished knife, but it is the cooling that makes or breaks the knife. Sometimes a sheet fails during cooling by cracking or warping. It seems that the blade went through the hardening process very well, it is straight, it does not have much deformation. Small warps can be corrected and I can see that the scale has come away from the surface of the steel here, which tells me that the steel has shrunk and become hard and that's what I was looking for, so now this is ready to go. finishing polishing and then handling the polishing operation is one of the areas where skill is most important and most obvious and this is one of the things that really determines the cost a single can can ruin the piece in an instant the handle is also an important factor in pricing the final product some materials like local maple are more affordable for Zach, but this Arizona Ironwood costs him 10 times more and is also a It is a harder wood than maple and requires more work to give it shape.

Zach designs the handles to serve the purpose of the knife. He makes the handles of kitchen knives thin but large enough for the chef to have a firm grip. On the other hand, a hunting knife requires different properties. Can be used with cold or wet hands, which may cause them to slip. The final step in creating a Damascus knife is engraving which makes the pattern bolder to the eye, once dipped in the etchant mixture one of the alloys oxidizes and becomes darker while the other. The alloy refuses to maintain its color now that the Damascus pattern is revealed, but Zach isn't done yet, he needs to evaluate the quality of his creation.

Let's try the edge and I use paper for this. This is a simple test. This knife should slide smoothly. It is razor sharp and needs no adjustments, ready to be sold to chefs like Diego Moya Diego has been a chef for 27 years and focuses on vegetable cooking. I've had a few sharp knives, but this one is ready to use. It slides without any resistance. It's quite surprising. Basically, it just does exactly what your arm wants it to do. You don't have to fight. He is using a 10 inch chef's knife made by Zach that costs 1,200. I think the experience. it's one of effortless, I think you just forget that you're using a knife and I think when you forget to use an iPhone, you use your arm to produce the cutting motion, that's pure bliss for this kind of experience, you have to do it. pay the price, the work that goes into the knife they purchase, and the level of skill required to make a quality Damascus knife.

Zach is one of fewer than 200 master knife makers designated by the American Knife Society to earn the title by which they must successfully produce a Damascus blade. A minimum of 300 layers the blade must be strong, hard, sharp and balanced. In Zack's case, he had to take the test twice before earning the title of master blacksmith. The knife's performance test includes cutting a 2x4 and even shaving arm hair, but it was a presentation test that set Zach back due to a 10-degree misalignment in the handle since he became a master blacksmith. Zach has continued to develop his skills in Damascus so one of his current projects could sell for over a hundred thousand dollars if officially commissioned so this is a project I have been working on for quite some time this is a very elaborate from the Middle East a type of scimitar this is a rough ground blade I forged from 1500 layer Damascus The demand for Damascus knives has created a market for fake Damascus where manufacturers print the swirl patterns on the knife and sell it to a more affordable price.

You can get a Damascus knife for $30, but it won't cut anything. There is definitely a growing demand for Damascus steel as I started making knives. It wasn't well known and I've really seen it myself in the last 15 years or so as cultural awareness has increased and people really understand what they're looking at. This spacesuit built in 1974 was reported to cost between 15 and 22 million dollars today, that would be around 150 million with no new mission-ready extravehicular suit having been delivered since then, NASA is running out of spacesuits In fact, NASA has been reduced to just four ready-to-fly Eva suits since 2009, NASA has invested more than $200 million in space suit development, recently the X emu prototype was unveiled, but NASA still has no a new fleet of spacesuits, why does it take so long to build new spacesuits and what makes them so expensive?

Spacesuits are so expensive because they are complex. Think of human-shaped spacecraft in terms of spaceships, not work clothes, a spacesuit has to protect an astronaut from the vacuum of space from radiation coming from the Sun and other bodies and it has to protect against traveling particles rapidly and traveling up to 18,000 miles per hour could penetrate the suit that provide oxygen Communications Telemetry and everything else a human needs to survive, all rolled into a small human-shaped spacecraft, but the spacesuits that NASA uses They are currently over 40 years old. 18 suits were developed for space. transportation program in 1974. and have overworked its original design 15-year lifespan.

Suit number one was only used for certification, while suit 2 was destroyed during ground testing. Two suits were lost in the Challenger disaster in 1986 and another two in the Columbia disaster in 2003. The most recent loss of spacesuits was Unit 17 during the SpaceX 7 cargo mission mishap. The exact cost to replace this unit, but estimates reach $250 million for the remaining 11 suits, damage is increasing and seven are in various stages of renovation. and maintenance that leaves only four spacesuits ready to fly aboard the International Space Station. In fact, NASA's first all-female spacewalk was postponed because the space station had only one medium-sized suit.

This milestone was finally achieved when NASA sent a medium-torso shell to fit. The largest suit in existence NASA has invested about a quarter of a billion dollars in developing the ex-emu suit for its Artemis program, which plans to return humans to the surface of the Moon in 2024 with a view to eventually go to Mars with that objective quickly. It approaches and the number of existing spacesuits decreases. NASA engineers face a new kind of space race. There is an absolute sense of urgency, not only because the number of suits themselves is relatively small, but also because of the individual components we use to keep the suits in good condition and condition. progress is also slowing down, a great example of that is carbon dioxide sensors, the design that current suits have is a Heritage design, some of whose components are no longer produced, some of the suppliers that manufactured those components are no longer produced.

They don't even exist, so Today the CO2 sensor is a great example of a component where a replacement design that will work for both the existing suit and the new one will basically be a drop-in replacement that is compatible with both. suit designs. These people-shaped spaceships are packed with complex components. but the most expensive parts are subject to debate the most expensive component of the spacesuit are the gloves the gloves are the most complex because astronauts need them for their manual dexterity to do meaningful work in space you see the interior you see a pulley system and ropes that hold it together and then on the outside of the glove you can see the system of heat radiators that allow the astronaut to keep his hands warm.

Gloves are an amazing and intricate component, but at the end of the day, the pressure garment, including gloves. Actually less expensive than the life support system, the backpack worn on the back of the suit is a highly compressed set of technologies that do everything from maintaining temperature to removing carbon dioxide and continuing to provide pressure inside. of the suit itself, and I think in the end, several of those components are more expensive than most of the other components of the garment, such as gloves, but even these expertly designed suits can go wrong in 2013, the astronaut of the European Space Agency, Luca Parmitano, reported that his helmet began to fill with water that accumulated on his forehead.

It's no sweat, no cash. Open copy coming, Chris, could you have some towels ready, that would be great. In total, almost a liter and a half of water leaked into his helmet, threatening to drown Parmitano in the middle of the spacewalk, but considering that NASA's Apollo-era spacesuits allowed 12. humans to walk on the moon 50 years ago and considering that space shuttle-era suits have been used on more than 200 spacewalks, such a large investment is needed in new spacesuits that it depends on what you are going to ask the astronauts to do Walking in Mars is different than walking on the moon, it's a different environment, it has different dangers, so when you choose these tasks for astronauts, you have to take into account if you want the astronaut to be able to walk crouching and pick things up or will they be able to walk. or she carries something, so she has all those considerationsthat must be included in that design.

We believe it is a necessity. Some of the components and some of the design concepts are no longer consistent with our values ​​and expectations in terms of quantity and distribution. of crew members we fit I think yes, the investment is appropriate and worth it, all those dollars are spent here on the ground and returned to us in ways that ultimately generate benefits for all of humanity and for the taxpayers here in this country. also reduce barriers to entry from a commercial perspective involve more companies get more companies to compete and innovate to try to continue lowering that price in an effort to develop technology at lower costs NASA often sets design challenges for innovation, sometimes partnering with the most impressive designers and companies in the 2009 Astronaut Glove Challenge Ted Southern took the second prize of one hundred thousand dollars he and his partner Nikolai Moysiff, a prominent Russian spacesuit engineer, used their winnings to form the final design of the frontier on which we were formed as a company 10 years ago and have worked with NASA on Eva suit components throughout that time, our largest customer NASA and have delivered prototype components for the suit, including pieces and sets of gloves, elbows and shoulders, but in the last two years we have focused on putting the entire system together and Frontier's final plans to build their own Eva suit much cheaper than NASA's.

We intend to deliver flight level suits with requirements similar to those of NASA. Our suits are made with the same material as the Seuss that NASA used until Traditionally, space suits are very expensive. I expect our suit development to be in the range of several million dollars, but I expect our Eva system to cost around 2 million dollars a piece or less, although NASA has not officially released the unit price of the new xemu suit, It is safe to say that your costs will be much higher if we took the design of the suit that we have today, if we were to reproduce copies of that suit, we believe it would cost us between 15 and 25 million per unit, but we believe that the design that we are developing today with the xcmu must not only stay within that range;

We actually believe that the competition and innovation that we've fostered will actually reduce that cost per unit. How do NASA spacesuits cost? Compared to other countries, the Russian equivalent of the Emu suit is called Orlan, as NASA also has four suits aboard the space station, but also has reserves at both the cosmonaut training center in Star City Russia and the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, according to Nikolai Moysiff, one of the few engineers working on both the American Emu and Russia's Orland, unlike NASA, Ross Cosmos has continually developed new generations of spacesuits. Moisev was personally involved in the development of five generations of Russian spacesuits and estimates that 24 units were manufactured between 1997 and 2002, with another 24 units manufactured between 2002 and 2019.

Ross Cosmos is also developing a new Eva suit for the first model of Russia.proposed moon landing by 2030 with Russian technology in a constant development cycle a US EMU fleet that continues to age more commercial opportunities could be available to private companies as last frontier to develop space suits Technologies at lower prices in 2017 Elon Musk revealed the SpaceX Iva spacesuit though This intravier killer suit is only for use inside the spaceship. Its 3D printed helmet and custom-made garments are a glimpse into the future of commercial space gear, but is there a real need for cheaper spacesuits or is space exploration inevitably expensive?

I think the world needs cheaper suits. space suits because in my opinion it is inevitable that we expand beyond the surface of the Earth, we need to harness the resources of space to keep our planet healthy and alive, so whether it is space suits or rocket technology or means to live in microgravity, all of these things I think are important for the future of humanity. For me they are two steps for the giant financing of the Costa, even in the world of high-end jewelry. Cuban link chains are a symbol of luxury. This 18-karat gold chain is worth twenty-seven thousand dollars.

Some of the most valuable chains will cost 10 times more than making a single chain requires the skill of more than five experienced jewelers and can take more than 12 hours. So how exactly are Cuban link chains made and is that what makes them so expensive? They take 14 hours of their day running hot steel through machinery to then turn it by hand, then file it by hand, then polish it by hand. You're not just wearing a chain, you're wearing someone's blood, sweat and tears and passion around you. The origin of the Cuban link chain is difficult to pinpoint, but it probably did not begin in Cuba;

It was an essential part of the hip-hop style in the '70s and '80s and grew in popularity as hip-hop became more common in the US. But not all Cuban link chains are created equal. , many Cuban link chains are made by machines in countries like the US, Italy and China, but the authentic and more expensive ones are made by hand in just a few stores in Miami when you move to the higher end. of Cuban link chains found on the fifty thousand eighty thousand one hundred thousand dollar chains, those have to be handmade because of the attention to file detail, the tight links is like going to a Ferrari dealership, you can buy a Ferrari off the lot or you can have it however you want, it's a custom build, a chain like this goes through 30 manual and time consuming stages, the skills come from your skill, practice and knowledge around the world.

I can't tell you an exact number in South Florida. a handful of people, literally a handful of people who could do this, this process is not only incredibly laborious but it is also dangerous. Chino and his team work with 1000 degree flames to melt the gold and shape it into a bar that you definitely have to be. paying attention to what you are doing in this job a disaster you are going to get hurt there have been people who have lost fingers in this in this

business

that bar goes through a rolling machine up to 12 times just to make it thinner Each of the nine jewelers of Gold Fever Miami has a specific job on the stretch bench.

A jeweler can spend more than an hour just stretching the wire. This is not dirt, this is real gold. If you look at my ads you will see the place. of gold on them, this wire is then wound around a copper rod to shape the links of smaller chains. A drill does the job, but thicker ones require the strength of two jewelers. The most crucial stage of the process comes next and also requires. The most skillful soldering is the most complex part of what you are doing, essentially what you are doing is heating up gold and just before it starts to break down and melt you are introducing solder.

Solder is another type of metal that is used to permanently close each bond, so it is the balance between applying the right amount of flame with the right amount of technique so that when those two metals meet, the solder will melt and become fuse into the gold, so if you leave it too long it's all just liquid gold. If done too soon, the solder won't melt properly and you won't get that fusion between the legs. You can't mess it up or you'll create gaps in the chain and you won't be afraid to stop. and do it all over again, it's no secret that the price of gold plays a role in determining the cost of these chains.

An ounce of gold today costs seventeen hundred dollars, but even the most luxurious Cuban links are mixed with something else: gold itself. A very soft material, usually too soft to be made into jewelry on its own, must be alloyed with other metals. White gold, for example, is a gold alloy made of white metals such as silver, zinc, and nickel. Those metals make gold more flexible, allowing it to stretch and twist during the jewelry-making process, but they can be especially difficult to work with a little movement. It can make a difference. In rare cases, with white gold, this can happen.

This is why it costs so much if any of these links break, then you have to take them back to the welding table, re-weld them and bring them back here and turn them again once the links are turned and tightened correctly , the chain will be flat, a jeweler must file the chain so that each side is level and looks exactly the same and this is where the passion of the jeweler comes into play because of how beautiful he can make that shape, but these cuban links in particular They didn't become as sought after or valuable until recently Google Trends shows that Searches for Cuban link chains began to take off in 2012 and in the last two years Gold Fever Miami sales have grown 100 times more than the store it used to sell Cuban links worth two thousand dollars a month; that figure is now over two hundred thousand dollars, whether you are the most famous or you are starting to legitimize yourself as a rapper you have to have jewelry and if you have jewelry you have a Cuban link chain from Miami in 2012 Jay-Z wore one of the Cuban links most expensive made in the A year later, Daddy Yankee premiered his 10 kilo Cuban link chain in a music video and there is even more traction in the music industry now that it is so intertwined with pop culture, more specifically hip-hop and reggaeton, almost everywhere.

The song that has a music video will have a rapper wearing a Cuban link chain from Miami. It has become something of a status symbol. We have clients who want to match their Rolexes with their chains. These versions are often decorated with diamonds, which naturally makes them more expensive. but Gus doesn't see demand slowing down for chains like this or the more modest ones at the moment, as of March 2021 we are pumping between 10 and 15 kilos in five days, so every five weeks and we still can't keep up with the rhythm. demand, we still have a lead time of five to seven weeks, this, together with the high price of gold, means that prices are not likely to fall in the short term continue to continue, often referred to as the wagyu of salmon .

Copper River king salmon can cost up to $120 a pound. It's like the retail price of fifteen hundred and two thousand dollars right here. That's six times more than other wild salmon and 10 times more than farmed salmon. This salmon is extremely rare. Finding for Cordova Alaska anglers means spending entire days in Dangerous Waters using life-threatening equipment and spending thousands of dollars on a permit, all with the strong possibility of returning to port empty-handed, for what it's worth. Copper River King Salmon is worth the challenge and why it is so expensive. The King Salmon, also called Chinook salmon, is one of the five species of wild Pacific salmon that swim in the waters of Alaska, the Copper River king is the largest and most nutritious of all, the copper color of the salmon is so vibrant it's such a deep red and it's like one of those things.

When you see it, it's very obvious that it's a Copper River salmon and the flavor is so buttery it's amazing. Kyle and his crew set sail in the early hours of the morning from the port of Cordova. It will take them two hours to reach the Copper River delta. Copper River king salmon will remain in the Copper River delta for only three to six weeks. Kings are the first wild salmon of the season and the start of the season is unpredictable, although it usually always falls in mid-May. The fishermen won't know when it's time. setting sail until less than a day before we usually have such a short window to fish it's very important to me to be able to make quick unpredictable decisions so it adds to the excitement that's crazy that's crazy the location is the first challenge for Kyle and his La The river delta crew is very large and there aren't many salmon swimming in that area, so fishermen like Kyle have to take their boats to shallow water.

It is extremely dangerous to fish for copper on king salmon because they like to hang out in shallow water. waters and when you're fishing in that area you're much more exposed to Mother Nature, you know the waves crush, crash on top of you and you're much more susceptible to capsizing your boat, um, we're We're about to pick up our anchor and then we'll do a set once the anchor is set. The chances of catching anything are Slim King Salmon makes up only a small percentage of the salmon in the Copper River. Ninety percent of it is Sockeye, which makes Kyle's job extremely difficult. difficult other than local laws require you to use specific nets called gillnets, which are hung vertically to catch fish by their gills.

Gill nets are an extremely effective way to catch these fish because each net is built by hand andcompletely customized so you know Copper River King Salmon we use a much larger mesh size, around six inches, so the smaller fish will swim through it and you know that when we can locate a king salmon, they fit perfectly into our grid. King King, give me a second. I'll explain it to you in a second. You should have put them on the bow, ah. So what happened was you know, king salmon are a very big fish and they usually don't get caught in the net, they usually just wrap themselves around. so it's imperative that you have a dip net to catch them in case they get out and what happened there was the first king of the day.

He was super super excited. He had the net under him and it had already reached its peak and began to crown over it. bow roller and I, uh, tried to reach forward to pull it, but because it got loose and I was only holding the dive net with one hand and because the King was so big, he overtook me and I ended up swimming, but the same features to do That gillnets are such an effective way to catch king salmon is also what makes their use so dangerous. There are many dangers in using a gill net specifically on deck for the crew just because we are using hydraulic equipment to send the net to In the water there is a lot of loose mesh that goes flying so anyone who knows, loose cords from a hoodie or shoelaces are very prone to snagging.

Missed catches are common here on the Copper River, even after spending all day in the boat. Kyle has a very good chance of returning empty handed which makes the fish he catches even more precious, yeah come on oh we just caught this toad off a copper river king salmon, this one probably weighs between 30 and 35 pounds, um, I feel like retail. The price, you know, this is like fifteen hundred and two thousand dollars here and, um, just to compare the size, this is a Copper River sockeye salmon, it has a darker mouth and also at the top of the spine you'll see that It has spots. the line and also these nice silver spots on the tail, so this one here probably weighs 22 pounds gross, it's a very beautiful, very oily Copper River king salmon, I'm very excited to have the first one, the first one on board, uh , Dave is starting. and I hope to capture many more.

The enormous size of the Copper River king salmon is due to their migration. Wild salmon hatch in freshwater streams such as the Copper River and then migrate to the ocean as juveniles after spending most of their lives at sea. They returned home to spawn for the Kings returning to the Copper River this means enduring a 300 mile long journey against a seven mile per hour current swimming between glaciers and gaining 3,600 feet of altitude the copper salmon has the longest migratory route salmon intensity of any salmon in the world because of that long journey home, it has a big impact on the taste of the copper salmon because the moment the salmon came in, you know they go from the ocean to the seawater and touch the fresh water of the Cobre River. salmon, their body automatically switches to reproductive mode, so until the day they reach fresh water, they are just feeding and putting on fat to make that 300 mile long trip, go, go, go, well, 39,000 kings are ready to return home in The This year, the Copper River is 13 below the 10-year average of 46,000.

Of these 39,000, fisheries are only allowed to catch less than half to ensure enough arrives salmon to the river for future generations. Kyle is only allowed out once enough. The salmon have escaped from the fishing grounds and have begun to move up the Copper River. The catch limit is different every day. It can be reached at any time. When it is like this, Kyle has to stop fishing and return to the port immediately, but he still needs to do it. bringing home enough to keep your

business

running and fishing in Copper River Bears has high costs if I came back empty handed it would cost me you know it could cost 300-600 in fuel and probably a chunk of my pride in a company.

Like Kyle's fuel can exceed twelve thousand dollars per season, but it is still significantly less than the cost of a permit to commercially fish in these waters, which is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. When I started commercial fishing, I didn't save any of my money for myself. Just because I had gone into so much debt to buy the fishery, I couldn't afford to save anything. With salmon for me I eat salmon very regularly now it's okay, come, come, yes, come, oh come on, come on, come on, come on, oh God mine, that's crazy, the other day we just bought seven crazy guys from the Copper River Kings that were blockers once Kyle comes back.

To port, fish should be filleted and packaged as soon as possible to preserve its nutritional value. It takes us about a week to get our salmon to consumers. The moment our anglers return, we will fillet the portion sous vide and flash freeze it for a minimum of three days. So in that way, seafood is consumable for sushi and considered sushi-friendly. They are so greasy that it is so oily that it is difficult to keep them down. They continue to ship Celsius King Salmon to fine dining and sushi restaurants, but also directly to customers across the country.

Leaving Alaska can be very expensive due to its remote location. It costs $65 per boat for a five-pound box of salmon from Cordova to New York. Due to an increase in demand, the price of king salmon has been slowly rising over the last five years a pound of copper river king salmon now costs between $100 and $120, although larger fish are sold for larger king salmon is becoming harder to come by, according to a 2020 study that found that in the last 60 years salmon in Alaska have become smaller, especially kings since 1960 King salmon have lost 8 percent of their body length.

Streams are warming earlier in the year and salmon are making their migrations at a younger age and smaller size. There is also competition with other fish populations caused by hatcheries releasing the fish they produce into the sea. In the long term, this drop in size affects the commercial value of salmon, nutrient transport, egg production and, especially, for king salmon, reduces supply for rural communities. Salmon and seafood in Alaska are more than a job, they are deeply rooted in our traditions. We have a lot of rural communities in Alaska that rely on these wild salmon as their only source of protein, so you know they don't have, some of them don't have access to grocery stores, so it's very important that these sand runs come back.

For them, buying a survival bunker used to be something for doomsayers and survivors, but this factory in Texas can't keep up with the demand because of the pandemic, people want days like yesterday, they want them so much they will pay. To get them right now, the most basic habitable bunkers start at fifty thousand dollars not including installation, but if you want to include a movie pool and a climbing wall, you can spend up to $4.5 million, so why people spend this kind of money? cash on something they may never use and why bunkers are so expensive. Meet Ron Hubbard, not the founder of Scientology, just Ron, the founder of Atlas Survival Shelters, so how do you prepare well?

You get food and water, but once you have all that, we're going to need a bunker and that's when I come into play. He sells bunkers at his 10-acre factory in Sulfur Springs, Texas. First of all, we want to make sure the bunkers are airtight because God forbid any type of airborne plague or chemical fumes. warfare biological warfare whatever Ron says, he builds about 24 bunkers a year that are the size of houses, as well as hundreds of smaller storm shelters, he says there is a real demand for an underground pandemic. Escape from the pandemic and politics, beyond conservatives or liberals, you simply have to care about. for the safety of his family in case this country ever ends up in some kind of Revolution, Civil War or if we enter into some kind of World War.

The bunker craze isn't exactly new; a new housing development near Denver, Colorado, shows off the nation's first model. Houses with built-in fallout shelters Thousands of Americans built their own fallout shelters at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s. They were made of steel to protect against radiation. Larry Hall converted a Cold War nuclear missile silo in central Kansas. in a 15-story inverted skyscraper that the government dismantled El Silo and Larry bought for three hundred thousand dollars in 2008. whether it was Kim Jong-un before this or Iran with the previous threats or when Barack Obama was elected president or when Donald Trump was elected president, I mean, people have a variety of fears.

The survival condo project has 12 apartments, some of which cost up to $4.5 million each. So far he has sold all but two of the condos we have in residential level five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten and eleven. Then there's a classroom library, a theater, an exercise room, and a spa. We also have a sauna complete with different colored mood lighting; After all, if you're going to spend a lot of time trying to survive underground and if you can afford it, you can. In addition to thriving in recent years, personalized disaster preparedness has become a multimillion-dollar business. At least 13.2 million Americans say they have plans and provisions to survive a month or more without electricity, running water or transportation.

Preparedness may simply mean stocking up on a number of

items

to help get through a power outage or having a storm shelter to survive tornadoes and hurricane-force winds. Since the start of 2021, sales of storm shelters have increased 30 percent, in addition to up from 35 percent the year before, possibly part of what it has been in 2020. It was a very traumatic year for all of us, so installing a storm shelter for your family was something they could control, that they could really impact and have some control over your family's safety, but bunkers are in a different league. Ron sells bunkers with a variety of add-ons such as escape tunnels and hidden doors, so he will usually have a secret passage leading to a secret hatch leading to a secret room.

This is not our grandfather's bomb shelter. They have all the amenities you would have. in a house, I mean, if you can have it in the house, you can have it in the bunker. This model costs around five hundred thousand dollars and fits three private bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, dining room, living room and a game room. Ron says he has more than a year of backorders even though prices for materials to build the bunkers have risen 15 to 20 percent since last November. The cost of lumber is triple the cost of Stills. triple the cost of gas has doubled everything has gone through the roof some people decide to build their own shelters about 60 miles from Dallas a doctor in his 40s built his own 1,200 square foot bunker to remain anonymous about his loving labor life insurance and disability insurance if you can afford it So far you've spent around a hundred thousand dollars on the bunker under your house and you haven't used it yet, but what makes a bunker so expensive: the nice things like Stainless steel appliances, nicer furniture, and higher ceilings are all relatively low cost.

The things that determine the costs are the life support systems, those are tremendously expensive. The bunkers are made of steel and concrete. It took the doctor about a year and $22,000 in materials to plan and design his bunker. He paid an excavation company twelve thousand two hundred. dollars to dig a hole 80 feet long and 50 feet wide and about 16 feet underground, then built the bunker quickly because he feared rain would ruin the excavation work, poured concrete foundation walls and filled in the dirt around it and on. He paid more than twenty thousand dollars for the concrete, twelve thousand dollars for a Styrofoam, and two thousand dollars for this single door.

He said he will invest another thirty thousand dollars to build a kitchen in other rooms. Of course, he has already stocked the bunker. with thirty thousand dollars worth of guns and ammunition from a pandemic will likely remain strong for years after it is over and the truth is, there is always something to fear. Crush test dummies take all the hits so we don't have to today, they're packed with technology and can cost over a million dollars each, but despite decades of innovation, one thing remains the same: the shapes. The body sizes of the mannequins are still based on an average-sized man from the middle of the last century.

We came inthe factory of one of the leading manufacturers to see how they are assembling the most advanced and diverse generation of dummies ever and to find out why they are so expensive humanitics is the largest crash test dummy manufacturer in the world based in the outside of Detroit, America's motor city, but atds as they are known, are a rare breed, people think there are hundreds of thousands or millions of crash test dummies in the world, in fact, there really aren't The entire world market exists, probably sells about 300 crash test dummies in a year, the most advanced Thor.

The design takes up to five months to complete because it can include more than 30,000 parts. It may look like a simple mannequin, but inside the doll there is a lot of engineering, a lot of time and a lot of work, a complex combination of metals and rubber. Each dummy is made of foam vinyl and plastic, and then inside comes an intricate network of sensors and electronics that send thousands of bits of data to automakers about the types of forces experienced in a crash. Here, a worker pours the vinyl mixture into a face mold. before it is put in the oven and the finished product has to be perfect, each model needs to survive countless impacts while still transmitting reliable data since the 1960s.

Improvements in automotive safety designed in part to Based on data provided by Crash Test Dummies have saved approximately 600,000 lives in the US, so it has to be reliable for not just one or two crashes, but for tens of thousands of crashes over a lifespan that could be more than 30 years. After molding, each one is trimmed and finished by hand under the skin, a skeleton provides strength. and durability, but unlike human bones, these do not break as easily. Most bone structures are made of steel and must be machined. We use numerically controlled machining to ensure they are manufactured precisely, where we have to meet all requirements.

Tight tolerances: You are machining the hip sockets where the femurs will go, the skulls, ribs and pelvis are modeled after their human counterparts. Older models are crude compared to the latest high-tech generation. This Thor doll even has a pelvis with moving parts. The pelvis is much more anatomically correct, allowing more load cells and sensors to be installed on the mannequin so we can record more accurate information. A series of sensors are used to detect which parts of the body would have been damaged or broken in an accident and which ones. He would have been left with bumps and bruises.

Every injury we can calculate is because we literally have sensors in every part of the body that is likely to have an injury, so it's very complex. The sensors are built and calibrated in their own special laboratory. dummies contain hundreds of them when a dummy collides forces come from different directions with different intensities sensors can measure compression torque, impact, displacement and acceleration older dummies had cables that sent information to an external computer The weight of the wiring would skew the test itself, so we developed a data acquisition system that is really like the black box that goes inside the crash test dummy, but what it does is it captures the data in microseconds of the crash and then can be downloaded separately, it's no surprise that a dummy comes with a very high price tag and if you look at our most advanced crash test dummies with hundreds of sensors and 30,000 parts hand-built to the most biofidelic standards in the world , can cost up to a million dollars, but most accidents are still tested with less sophisticated dummies, the vehicle is running, and despite the fact that there are more women in the US than men with driving licenses, Rating agencies continue to use mannequins based on male body shapes to compile their star ratings for automakers.

For the frontal crashes we used a hybrid 3 dummy that represents a medium-sized man. For our side crashes we used what is called a Sid 2s doll that represents a smaller female occupant or a teenager. Women and adolescents are represented by even smaller versions of the male body shape. The male mannequins used in the tests are modeled after the height and weight of a man in the US of the 1980s, while the height has not changed, the waist, the average man has gained 20 pounds since then, while the standard model has no humanity and other pacifier manufacturers began designing more representative pacifiers more than a decade ago the abdomen is slightly more biofidelic than the 50.

Historically, the generation of Thor models includes a male version, the 50th Thor, and a female version, the fifth Thor. The difference here is that it's not a scaled-down male dummy, but a female crash test dummy and if you look at the fifth Thor, a lot of new sensors have been added to specifically address the injuries and concerns that we're seeing in an associated field. Better reflecting female drivers' actual body shapes and sizes means a wider variety of mannequins and higher production costs, but the net result is better data and safer vehicles. In fact, additional information can be provided to the designers of the car companies, the designers of the air bags. seat belts and other restraint system providers and can use that information to build even safer cars;

However, the cars we will see in a few years may never be tested with crash test dummies. The future potentially holds many changes for our industry. One of the things that could change is that we will do less physical testing with real dummies and vehicles and more testing in the virtual world to represent a wider range of speeds, angles of impact, a wider range of occupants, men, women, different sizes, stone crabs. Claws are one of the most expensive seafood you can buy and depending on their size, half a kilo of claws in a restaurant can cost up to seventy dollars, but catching these crabs is hard work, oddly enough, fishermen can only collect the crabs' claws, while the bodies must be returned to the ocean.

So what makes these claws so coveted and why are they so expensive? Stone crab can only be caught on the southeast coast. from the US, Cuba, the Bahamas and Mexico, and it is Florida where more stone crabs are caught than anywhere else. These crustaceans are noticeably more expensive than other popular crabs. A pound of claws can cost twice the price of Alaskan snow crab legs; part of what makes these crabs so expensive is the labor-intensive catching process; there is a good Ernie Patton Jr. crab has been fishing stone crabs commercially for over 40 years with limited time to harvest each year its crew must start their days early sailing before the sun rises.

The process begins with dropping traps to the ocean floor. This is probably the most fun part. You know, you get to be a little more physical. these claws can be a dangerous process, the kind on an adult crab can have up to 9,000 pounds of pressure per square inch with the enormous pressure exerted, they could actually tear off a finger at the joint, these crabs have them on their own. They can bite you easily, you know, if you're not careful, I've only been bitten, say, eight times in my career, they've popped over a million balls in my days, the crew leaves the traps in the water for about two weeks before they They are pulled by a rope, then each one has to be carefully sorted, we will come back in a couple of weeks and then we have a couple in the trap, we will take them out, we will remove the claws and, uh, we hope for a good day.

Break the claws quickly so as not to keep the crabs out of the water for too long, but even if a trap is full of crabs, Kevin can't necessarily take all the claws, the state requires that all claws collected be at least 2 and 7 8 Inch long crabbers can legally break both claws if they meet the required size. We measure the ones that seem smaller on the meter like this. Crabs are one of the few animals that can regenerate when a crab loses one or two claws, they can grow each one back. On average, it can take up to three years for claws to grow large enough to be harvested again, so the state requires crabbers to pay close attention to the size of each claw, this ensures that fishermen don't remove one prematurely, but a Although the claw's ability to some researchers have questioned the sustainability of this system, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission found that between 46 and 82 percent of crabs died from the loss of two claws, while between 23 and 59 died from the removal of one, compared to only 12.8 percent of crabs.

Crabs that died when their claws were not removed can only regrow a claw if the joint that joined them is left intact, otherwise they will bleed to death, making the way these claws break even most important to preserve the future of the fishery. Hire enough people. Making the operation run smoothly is another reason for the high price of these claws and then there is another cost that you would never expect. Each trip requires 900 pounds of pig's feet as bait and that's about half the total cost of fishing for the day. Normal running costs to go to Stormcraft today are about eleven hundred dollars to leave the dock.

Delay prices have fuel prices have gone up you know track tag prices have gone up after 10 hours on the boat Ernie's crew must boil and freeze their catch as soon as they get back otherwise the claws won't catch. They will keep fresh to finish the day by weighing each claw, which ultimately establishes the final value. The claws are sold in four sizes at Billy Stone Crab Restaurant. Prices range from $35 to $70 per pound. four thousand pounds of stone crab at the restaurant each week on a busy weekend we sell between seven and eight hundred pounds of stone crab the most expensive order costs $140 the plate consists of four colossal seven-ounce claws that yield just under a pound of crab meat fresh cooked claws are sold on ice or cheaper, but it will still cost you twenty-nine dollars a pound years ago, stone crabs were not such a valuable food in the 1890s, they were nothing more than an incidental catch in lobster traps.

Fishermen began preserving the crabs that fell into those traps, and by the end of the 20th century the stone crab fishery had become one of Florida's most valuable industries; Today it is worth $30 million and prices for these claws are not likely to drop anytime soon, according to data from The FWC shows that the number of crabs caught each year has decreased by seven hundred and twelve thousand pounds, that is, from the peak of the harvest to Since the late 1990s, many commercial harvesters have also begun fishing farther from shore, indicating fewer crabs in the area. The FWC says both of these changes pose a threat of overfishing and prices have increased to keep the fishery profitable and further protect the species in the future.

The FWC instituted even stricter regulations last year. Two changes include an increase in the minimum harvestable claw size and a shortening of the fishing season. In less than two weeks, these limitations are unlikely to reduce the cost of stone crab claws, but the goal is to help preserve them and keep Florida Fishers busy for years to come. This is dancing the rice. It is a traditional technique to extract this ancient grain of rice. from his helmet is just one of the many steps that members of the Ojibwe tribe take to taste the grain known as manumin, which means the good berry.

This type of wild rice has been harvested by the tribe in the Great Lakes region of North America for centuries. One pound can sell for 24.15 times more than white rice to the Ojibwe people. Harvesting this rice means much more than money, it is a way to connect with your ancestors and pass on your traditions to future generations, but like the rest of the world. Discover this ancient grain, the tribe fears that it will lose its importance and become separated from its natural ecosystem, so what is the meaning of manumin and why is it so expensive? We headed to one of our tribal leagues, that's not the reservation, this lake is 100% tribal property.

People see that you can't own the water, but this is a reserve dish. While most of the wild rice on the market isgrown in patties to mature, all at the same time, manuman still follows the natural cycle of the rice plant, this difference has not gone unnoticed and the popularity of the grain has been growing for decades, but for the Ojibwe tribe, the manuman is sacred, They continue to harvest it by hand, which is one of the reasons it can sell for twice as much as cultivated wild rice. A life has a spirit, so we offer tobacco to whatever we do.

Leland is the rice chief of the tribal band here in Mo Lake. It is here that Manuman grows every fall when the season begins. Leland is heading to the lake with his cousin Chad to harvest the rice right now I'm pushing-pulling Chad Chad is our picker I'm the pusher we're looking for the rice right now the puller's job is to get his rice and put it on top of the rice so he You can pick it up by looking for the rice on top, you know, here you can see there are grains of rice on top in a couple of spots and even if there's nothing there, I'll still grab it and pull it in, something might fall out of the rice. two one two one two every time you tell me good to harvest the rice Chad the knocker uses a set of wooden sticks to knock the rice straight from the plants into the canoe as a knocker Chad follows in the footsteps of his grandfather who used to Harvest Moon too I made this set myself the year he passed and in this set is the set he made the year before he passed makes me feel good while he works he thanks the plants for today's harvest give me a problem I mean. glitch me glitch me glitch say thank you also dictate a rhythm for picking that's the best sound in the world unlike manuman grown rice doesn't ripen at the same time so Leland and Chad have to go out in the canoe several times during the season it's small in your hand, but after a while of being here, it adds up.

I mean, we were only here for an hour and about a quarter of our boat is covered, but what's here on the floor of the boat is not the size of the final crop. Within this, you will often find unripe rice and holes with no rice inside. Green rice when we talk about green rice, it's actually green green rice and it's this black rice, here it is, there are years when we get what we call a ghost. career, the gold strikes, it will be, you will have a, you will have the spoils of rice and there will be nothing in it, it will be empty, part of it, some stocks do not always grow when my Newman is sold.

It usually sells for about 24 per pound The price varies depending on the overall harvest The stock and connections of the buyer You know how people refer to oil as Black Gold This is our black gold Now that Leland and Chad have returned from the lake It's time to dry the rice depending on how ripe it is, it may need to be soaked overnight. Look, we didn't really have to get this rice wet last night just because it's already starting to ripen really well. The entire community participates in the drying process. Brilliant. opportunity for tribe members to learn from their elders Air drying is the first step in separating the rice grain from the holes Removing the holes further reduces the size of the overall crop, but today's trip to the rice beds Rice has been more successful than the crops of recent years.

The year we had some nice greens, it was long, it was fair, so this year your rice percentage would be about 80 20. The 80 percent of the green that you will get will probably lose 20 percent with the Halls that we actually are. converting that rice from a medicine to a food as long as that wild rice has moisture or water, it still has a slight removal of moisture is important for the next step: drying the moisture on a wood fire, it is done in a metal pan with a wooden pallet. This part is going to be the coldest part of the tub and this is going to be the hardest part, so you're going to put this on the heat and you're going to see it turn brown when it starts to settle if the kernel holds too much moisture and it will pop like popcorn, but the separation of the grains from their holes is far from complete.

Roger makes a shallow hole in the ground, pours in the rice and covers it with deerskin and then puts on a pair of soft suede moccasins and threshes the rice by stepping on it. This step is called dancing the Royce and Roger takes it very literally it seems the turn but it's the rv2 ignition step a little bit we tell everyone I said this is actually how I got my 47 year old wife now the posture she uses is not to maintain balance, she uses them to transfer her weight and avoid breaking the rice Rogers' two steps were successful once they were separated from the grains the holes are so light that they fly away like dust and that is exactly how they will be filtered throwing the lot into the air from this birch bark basket today dance and throwing the rice can also be done with a machine yes, you know you have two four six 12 moccasins 12 12 feet working at once instead of two feet working at once as it rotates, the aisles are removed.

You can see there is a long green. There are some that are a little broken. Those little broken things are good for congee. About this faster method. The tribe puts it great. It is important to continue dancing and throwing the rice with your hand. There are Elders who always told us to pay attention because one day you are going to teach this. You know, when I was a kid, I just laughed at it and it was like, you know, I'm not going to be that guy, but here I am teaching everyone what I know, but while a good yield is important, the tribe doesn't harvest to get Profits.

Man only sells himself when necessary. You know, you can't just buy this on Amazon. I'm sure there are certain people who will sell it on the Internet. These are people who are around and can make connections with someone who does this. It's about those. relationships and how they can do it what price are they willing to give for a pound of minoan rice contains three times more protein than white rice more vitamin B than brown rice and is rich in antioxidants these values ​​have made it an essential part of the diodes Ojibwe for centuries along with berries, fish, meat, vegetables and maple sugar.

Well yes, there are many different ways to make rice. You can add wild rice to almost any type of dish. I mean, we have berries with wild rice walleye cheek soup. with wild rice, okay, it doesn't even compare nutritionally to white rice or even Uncle Ben doesn't even have anything on us. Mole Lake is the exclusive property of the local Ojibwe tribe, who carefully controls the flow of water and monitors its minerals. There are no motor boats. are allowed on the lake and hunting for ducks and geese is prohibited during the rice harvesting season. We do not allow lead shot to be used when shooting birds because it then settles into the sediment that the plant will absorb. ancient rice bed I mean, we had rice carbon dated 800 years ago.

Leilan and Chad's harvest manumen is not about harvesting every last grain of rice from the plants, not all the rice falls into the canoe and that's fine, the rice that falls back down. in the water the lake will be reseeded for the next season. We believe you take what you need, not what you want. Over the past 200 years, the ecosystem that supports manumen has become increasingly threatened. The tribe was forced to farm land for the federal government in 1837 and 1842 and still today regularly receives multimillion-dollar offers from different suitors to sell the lake as Newman becomes more popular, many non-tribal people who have not done this want to leave and trying to do it themselves, so one of the concerns is that they don't know how to do it because they can actually destroy a bed of rice when they are picking, they hit it too hard, they are trying to get it all out, even though the harvest was good this year , this is not always the case, there have been people who came from the lake daily with More than 200 pounds.

There are years when you arrive with an average of 150 pounds. This year looks to be one of the best of the last century. Human hand-harvested habitat has decreased by a third. Water Pollution. The oil pipelines. Fluctuating water levels. Rising temperatures and invasion. Fish species are factors that threaten the delicate ecosystem of Mall Lake and other lakes where manuming grows. There are other lakes around here that do have rice, but you know it's not as green as the one we have or you know it's not as big. As thick as what we have here in this race Lee, this is the reason we are here is for this race we fought for this race to live here what Leland is referring to is the Battle of Mole Lake, a NATO tribal clash that killed 500 people in 1806.

People were being pushed from east to west in Lakota. Turns out some of them are still some of them. It turns out that we are some of them, but our people never left and they weren't going to leave. Let's leave this area because this is where the spirits told us to stay. It is essential that the lake has a constant supply of fresh water to prevent any buildup of sediment that prevents nutrients from reaching the rice plants, as the custodians of the lake. Local collectors do what they can. To manage this natural resource this water is not always at this level, they are in the stream down here, we have a dam in the water that we build every year and so we can bring the water from the same grain but domesticated by farmers and grown in rice fields They can now be found at a fraction of the cost and are often mislabeled as wild rice, but to the Ojibwe tribe, naturally grown manumin has a value that cannot be easily counted in dollars and cents, what the people know as wild rice. .

It's not what we call it, we call it Newman and it's the good seed or the good food and people say it's wild, but it was put here for a purpose for us, this little blue gemstone is one of the rarest in the world and because of the unique way it is formed in the earth. Bonita White Shines even brighter than diamonds, making it incredibly expensive. A single carrot can cost over twelve thousand dollars, but you can only find this gem in one place. Because it is pretty? Why is it so hard to find and what makes it so expensive?

How is white thorn different from other gemstones? It has a brighter vitreous sheen, meaning it looks like glass, but is shinier. It also has a high dispersion or fire, which means it can shine brighter than others. gemstones, so here we are at the top of the mine, this is a private mine, it is part of the Bonita White mining company, owned by John and Dave Schreiner, the company is stationed here because the faceted grade Bonita light is can be found in one place San Benito County, California That's why it's the gem of the state. Microscopic deposits have been found in Japan, but so far this is the only place you can find it where it's actually big enough to hold in your hand and put in jewelry, not knowing how rare it was. to extract the light from the needle like any other gem with explosions and blunt force and now the supply is finite.

Gemstones like Benito White are usually dispersed, but sometimes there is an underground vein where concentrated amounts of the gem accumulate. Bonita White formed when an oceanic plate and a plate of the Earth's crust came together, one plate slid under the other and water became trapped at the fault line. The magma then invaded the fault line and mixed with trapped water as cracks and veins formed in the surrounding rock. The superheated mixture flowed into them here. The rare element barium bonded with titanium silica and other elements together formed Bonita White, but finding the gem is a guessing game and if John and Dave guess incorrectly the cost is high to help them find where Bonita Light could be, they search for this White light. part of the rock is nitrolite and the darker part is more blush these are two minerals that surround and protect Bonita Light if you see the white it can mean that you found a white vein of Bonita and when the vein comes to the surface it is known as an outcrop. a large vein or a large outcropping a light Bonita was right here and had fallen against the mountain that was excavated dynamited all the material from the top disappeared that does not mean that there are no stones here, that's all, they are everywhere However, no Benito Wayne has been found here since the late 1990s, so today John and Dave are mining in a place they think has potential and they have to limit where they think the vein is because digging and drilling is expensive and not They can do it.

Don't allow yourself the luxury of making mistakes. Core drilling alone will cost them two hundred thousand dollars. Financing is always a problem. Mining is not a cheap enterprise. Normally, that's what holds us back, just having the funds to move forward, so as they work to get that funding. We are also working to confirm exactly where the vein is after loading all the material they excavated, they can start processing it to see if there is a concentration of the needle wipe that begins the sorting. This is the first stage of washing. Theplant here it is. where the material was originally poured, so anything above an inch and a half stops right there after this, John can locate larger specimens that need to be acid etched where acid is used to carefully separate the light Bonito from their environment, they also filter out everything less than an eighth of an inch and the sorting material goes up a long conveyor belt to be washed in the tremel.

The tremel shakes and cleans the rocks before they reach the black light room. The trough is fluorescent so the Shriners use ultraviolet light to identify the gem without damaging it after filtering and washing all the fluorescent pieces and collecting the best ones, one of them is a Bonita light, although John found some good pieces of Benito light, the excavation of Today was good, this is good, we've done even better, he and Dave are hopeful that they're sure they're getting very close to locating that vein. Finding another Bonita white vein would be extraordinary, it would change a lot of things, that is the direction we are going and want to go. a financial hurdle, uh, but we're getting there, but even if John and Dave find a vein, it doesn't mean that all the White Bonito they dig up can sell for top dollar, it's a naturally small gem like diamonds, so Most rocks they find can't be faceted into a clean, transparent gem; on average about 80 percent of the stone is lost during the cutting process.

It also depends on how clean you want the stone to be, but Benito's remarkable and highly valuable properties make all this work worth it. What is also very unique about Bonita White is that it is doubly refractive, so when light enters the stone it splits into two rays, creating a doubling effect that gives Bonito White a complex internal appearance, but On the surface it appears as if light is bouncing off the gem. On all sides, the depth that these qualities create is enriched by the color of the stone, which is shown in the price of a colored gemstone, it is the color, the color, the color, it is the first, the last and The most important factor that affects the value of a gemstone is color and depth also maintaining the color.

A deeper stone may have a deeper color and that makes it more valuable. The darker the color, the more valuable the stone. Thanks Please.