Mekong Silver has been in the works for years while I fiddled around building websites and searched around Thailand for the best opportunity to quit my day job and finally settle down with my wife, a lovely Thai woman, who introduced me to the wonders of Thai art and culture. The only thing missing was someone to take care of the auctions and ship the products. My dad, also an eBayholic, turned into my shipping department, customer service wizard, and auctioneer extraordinare.

Now we're off and running. But wait! We're running out of stock! OK, I'll buy more. After all, that's the fun part. OK dad, keep sending that money and I'll shop till I drop. Uh oh... Those auction charges are eating away all the profit. More than that, we're losing money big time! What do we do? Buy more stuff and hope for the best!

Yes, this is what it's like and it can be a lot of fun. I love Asian art, in particular Thai art and crafts. Thai craftsmen and women make their crafts with that same perfection and intensity that a food stall cook makes that wonderfully spicey Som Tam (papaya salad). Spending years or a lifetime with one specialty you get pretty good at it. Once word gets around, people will be pounding at your door. Like my wife when she goes through her Tom Yang Goong withdrawals wandering around looking for a certain vendor, people searching for certain crafts will find their way to the masters of their trade.

So what is Hill Tribe Silver? And how does it relate to Thai Karen Silver? Well, to tell you the truth, Karen Silver is just a small sub-category that has been blown out of purportion on the Internet. It's come to the point that a seller has to say it's Karen Silver to get the people used to searching for that term to find it. But really, the lines are blurred. Hill tribes share ideas, trade items, and even copy the Thai people who are copying them! Historically there were significant differences but these days it's getting harder to tell who makes what and where new styles are inspired from.

I tried selling other crafts on eBay a while back but for some reason they didn't sell. Too bad because there are some deals there too good to pass up. Thai silk, Burmese lacquerware, Thai and Burmese mother-of-pearl, Cambodian silver, resin sculptures, carved soap flowers, Japanese clay flowers, etc. Beautifully crafted works of art that became presents for my family after they flopped on eBay. Hopefully, someday I can get back into that... but for now, I'm sticking with this one little area of Thai Hill Tribe Silver, I mean, Thai Karen Silver.

There's one little tricky subject that I need to bring up before I go any further. Maybe I should have put this up on top for everyone to read. Maybe I should just be quiet and go with the flow. But, no I can't. Here it is. Thai Hill Tribe Silver is 100% silver with exeptions so I'm sticking with "High Content" instead of giving a percentage. The standard is high but not absolute. It's high enough that the Hill Tribes and Thai people don't give it a second thought. It's thought of as pure. Like the love for 24 karat gold in Thailand, the hill tribes don't like anything diluting their silver. Alloys just aren't "cool" in Thailand, as well as in, Burma and Cambodia (Vietnam's standard is 18K by the way). The exceptions are in the design. The silver and gold smiths have traditionally made jewelry around the idea of a pure, softer metal by adding to the weight and size. An example would be that in western jewelry the clasp of a necklace is usually hidden in the back, whereas in eastern jewelry, it's thicker but doesn't need to be hidden, as it's part of the design, holds the necklace together, and usually a pendant. The exeptions are usually new or western designs that call for it.

There's another issue that comes up with the selling of crafts that I always get. "How much do the artisans make?" "Are you exploiting them?" "Are you benefiting from child labor?" Tough, serious questions that should be answered. Here's my best shot: Most Thai crafts are done by farmers in their spare time under the guidance of a local silver smith. Most of this spare time is in the first few months of the year when they are waiting for the rainy season but can be any time of year while waiting for the next cycle in the fields. If you see the actual work being done it might make you feel better. It's a communal affair and a chance for people to get together. It may start with a few people sitting under a thatch hut and end up looking more like a party taking up all the property wih others coming over just to visit. I see this all the time with my wife's family and relatives getting together to get vegetables ready for the market or lending a hand for a neighbor. Children may join to help out but it's more just to hang out with everyone that to work. But for the children, girls especially, who do get wrapped up in the work, it is a step in the direction of financial independance and insurance from being pressured to find money, not just in the bars but more often getting married off to someone just for the money.

Last but not least... How can I succeed in this business while saving you money? The only overhead I have is $37.00/month to host my website. I built, host and maintain the website myself. My photo studio is a concrete table, concrete chair, the sun for light, and a little hut for shading set in the front yard and a plain piece of paper for a background. I carry most of the siver back with me to save on shipping costs. My wife helps me weigh and sort the items when she has time. My dad, I mean - my distribution manager - has almost everything prepackaged and ready to go when he receives it. It's all about keeping the overhead low while automating everything as much as possible. This may seem impersonal but a good example of how this makes it even more personal is by looking at another seller, eThaiMarket. Everything about their auctions and website seems so simple but underneath it's all about setting things up to automate the process. I bought a couple things from them a couple years ago to see how they did. What I learned was that they had more time to talk with the customers and deal with problems because of the way the system was set up.

The price of silver at the time of writing (August, 2005) is just under $7.00 per ounce. That's about $0.25 per gram. The average price on eBay for crafted hill tribe silver is between $.50 and $0.70 and I'm selling at the bottom of that range, often less. While there are some deals to be had every now and then with a low starting price, I have the lowest average starting price. The quality is the same but the prices are lower. Hmmmm... Maybe this is why I'm still losing money! Last month we sold only 25% of our auctions and because of that we lost $150.00. All we need to do is increase that little, precious number so we can all win. But we'll be patient. We've put in now over $7,000 so far and have no intentions of giving up now.

And that's my story. Not exactly what I had in mind for an "About Me" page but for those who made it all the way through, thanks for hanging in there. For those interested, I have some of my travel photos up on my personal site for friends and family here.

Bruce Dailey