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Not to get on my soapbox about valuing labor but I'm about to get on my soapbox about valuing labor. I could not figure out how dice vendors were selling dice for $80-$160 when the cost to create them alone was at least $100. https://twitter.com/dualwieldstudio/status/1281703894507118594
Some things I've found out during my search:
Most of this is produced overseas, due to the very low cost to produce, as with most stuff. The safety and health reqs people creating dice out of resin/stone is not as comprehensive as apparel/plush.
Most of this is produced overseas, due to the very low cost to produce, as with most stuff. The safety and health reqs people creating dice out of resin/stone is not as comprehensive as apparel/plush.
Most "stone" dice are not actually the stone they say. For example, a lot of "amethyst dice" are not ACTUALLY amethyst, they're a stone dyed to look like it.
In the jewelry industry (who predominantly, until recently were responsible for most outsourcing of lapidary services overseas) most of them have stopped sending official stone to manus, because they have no idea what they get back. I spoke to a handful of lapidaries
who basically said that there was so little regulation that they stopped bothering to source their own stones and just go with whatever the manufacturer has, and test the stones intermittently. (The jewelry industry is Not Great, but that's another thread entirely.)
There's been the crystal boom ("healing" crystals etc) that ties in with the dice, but there's not a whole lot of actual legislation protecting those who mine these items with the boom of purchasing.
Mining is also like, HORRENDOUSLY bad for the environment, but a lot of the stones that are used for crystals and dice are generally a by-product of mining for other items.
It's also exceptionally difficult to find stones that you can trace back to the actual mining facility to vet. Very few of the dice I looked into had any indication of WHERE they sourced their stones from outside of generally listing countries they came from.
Obviously, because I'm using a lapidary within the US the manufacturing price is higher, so my dice will be more expensive, but the measure of control I'm able to have on these makes me feel a lot better about producing them.
So, in short - I'm not saying you have to stop buying stone dice or whatever, but when your dice are taking, at a minimum, 4+ hours to facet (not counting the time to etch, paint, etc) maybe question why the dice are so cheap?
No wait, one more thing. The TTRPG community is big and loud, and it would be so great for us to come together and leverage our collective voices to get actual reform for the mining and manufacturing prices to create your favorite dice.
Not to be like, AND ANOTHER THING, but, A huge problem with carving actual stone dice (when you're using the stone that you say you're using) is that the dice will break. This is a huge problem for manufacturers, who lose these stones when vendors req
hard to cut materials or materials with a high defect ratio. I spoke to a fair number of lapidaries and manus who said they couldn't claim these with the person purchasing them, because they were defects (and thus unpurchasable.) These often just get tossed out.
(also people who make resin dice, damn dude y'all should be charging WAY more for how much work it takes you to pull molds, cast, sand, etc.)
