There are many hundreds of excellent full time professional blacksmiths in the USA. The guy featured in this video is a master- but he is far from the "last", even at that time in Germany. There a bunch of pro's in Germany, I have met a few, and they do well. We actually know more about metallurgy, materials, and process than the old timers. And that knowledge means that the guys today, who practice enough, are every bit as good as the ones 200 years ago, except due to more knowledge and less guessing, the products are better, too. I was just at the Northwest Artist Blacksmith conference a month ago, and there were probably 150 blacksmiths there, with a good 20-30 of them full time pros.