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One of my daughter's alumni is making these

That chess set is pretty fricken cool..

How much time goes into something like that? and how much did it/does it/will it sell for?
That has to be a pretty penny, that is a ton of work.

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I wish I had the time and patience to do stuff like that.
 
He has an Instagram account that shows the "guts" of his process building his pieces. He also was just granted a permanent exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Industry.
 
That chess set is pretty fricken cool..

How much time goes into something like that? and how much did it/does it/will it sell for?
That has to be a pretty penny, that is a ton of work.

_DSC8696.jpg


I wish I had the time and patience to do stuff like that.

he is way out of my price range....my daughter says some of his pieces are well over 6 figures. (pawn intended)

he is not hurting.


dee
;-D
 
"Art" pays horribly, unless your stuff gets to be a cult item while you are still alive.

It's a common (and somewhat true) that the sales price you can get for a piece of art is low until the artist dies.... Then it starts going up.

Now, that item is a kind of specialty item, more so than many sorts of art. it's "techie art". It might do pretty well in the SF area, with the silicon valley folks.... techie rich geeks.
 
"Art" pays horribly, unless your stuff gets to be a cult item while you are still alive.

It's a common (and somewhat true) that the sales price you can get for a piece of art is low until the artist dies.... Then it starts going up.

Now, that item is a kind of specialty item, more so than many sorts of art. it's "techie art". It might do pretty well in the SF area, with the silicon valley folks.... techie rich geeks.

A lot of this stuff is like fancy knives where there are very very few people that pay 30k for a knife. If this dude found those people, more power to him.
 
He obviously knows what's going on. He makes some pretty cool stuff. Wonder what kinda tolerances you have to hold on art?

Brent
 
I think his stuff is cool. Not to my taste, but I like the way he approaches the work and the way he's been able to figure out how make his parts. Hard to believe he's completely self taught, but who knows.

As far as $$, it's all about marketing. The right people could sell turds as art. Look at Damien Hirst's animal carcass stuff.

I made art furniture which sold for silly money. Then the market collapsed, my gallery dealers decided to retire, and now in my dotage I make banjos for pocket change. So it goes...
 
I sell products in similar worlds as this guy and he is not doing bad, I can confirm that much. He's a making a killing to say the least. There's quite a few people out there that pay good money for machined goods. I believe it's primarily due to a lack of understanding in what they are purchasing since most people haven't a clue when it comes to machining. I think there is that perception of something being potentially better than it is due to having spent a lot of money on it but this guy seems to do good work and has very much carved out a good niche for himself so good on him.
 
I sell products in similar worlds as this guy and he is not doing bad, I can confirm that much. He's a making a killing to say the least.

How much is a killing? Why does he have shit machines if he's making a killing? Why is he even turning handles if there's so much money to be made?
 
Why spend money if you don't have to? Low to no overhead you can do pretty damn well.

I should clarify when I say making a killing I'm talking about profit margin on his stuff. It looks pretty high to me.
 
Why spend money if you don't have to? Low to no overhead you can do pretty damn well.

I should clarify when I say making a killing I'm talking about profit margin on his stuff. It looks pretty high to me.

If you've got high profit margin products and a lot of buyers, you don't fool around with hobby machines in your basement.

If you sort of have a few buyers here and there, hobby machines makes sense.
 
^ you don't get his market place, not all products make more money when made cheaper and in high quantities. The right customers pay a lot more for one off stuff than you ever make in production.
 
Six figures?

The price you put on it and the price a buyer will pay can be very different.

I wish him luck. And advise him to keep the day job.
 
WoW !! Good for this kid. He does some beautiful work. I think us Ham and eggers don't have any idea what some people can imagine and sell. I gave a few talks about micromachining at a few conferences 10+ years ago. I met people from all over the world that make watches, jewelry, and custom instruments in their basements and garages and make way more than I do. I know of a couple of watchmakers that just do custom cases out of exotic materials and they make over 300k in their garage per year. Another guy made mechanical trophy's and awards, really high end type stuff and he lives on the beach in California and drives a SL500 benz..... so you just never know when you might get lucky. But both of these things most shops would throw out the guy who walks in and asks for that kind of work.....
 
^ you don't get his market place, not all products make more money when made cheaper and in high quantities. The right customers pay a lot more for one off stuff than you ever make in production.

I don't see how it makes sense to stick with hobby grade crap if he's selling his shit for big bucks and there are customers lined up.
 
WoW !! Good for this kid. He does some beautiful work. I think us Ham and eggers don't have any idea what some people can imagine and sell. I gave a few talks about micromachining at a few conferences 10+ years ago. I met people from all over the world that make watches, jewelry, and custom instruments in their basements and garages and make way more than I do. I know of a couple of watchmakers that just do custom cases out of exotic materials and they make over 300k in their garage per year. Another guy made mechanical trophy's and awards, really high end type stuff and he lives on the beach in California and drives a SL500 benz..... so you just never know when you might get lucky. But both of these things most shops would throw out the guy who walks in and asks for that kind of work.....

No.

Too good to be true shit usually is. Yeah sure, there's a few guys that have a little niche and make good money, but they are far and few between. No different than the knife making world. There are a zillion guys with machines in their garage and they aren't making jack shit for money. Pointing out a few outliers doesn't prove anything.
 
I don't see how it makes sense to stick with hobby grade crap if he's selling his shit for big bucks and there are customers lined up.



On the other hand, he's getting it done, and if it sells for good money, time is not an issue, the way it is for most. If every one is different, "production" is not a problem. If he sells for big bucks, he does not need to make many per year to do pretty darn well.

Think about a sculptor in marble.... Hammers, and things like a chisel, and polishing materials..... that's what they use, not high dollar tooling (although good stuff still costs).
 








 
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