volatile commodities-- looking at pirces adjusted for inflantion: wild fur, part 1

Some of you know that I like to fur trap. I do it as a hobby for enjoyment and maybe a little extra pocket change in the end, a lot like scrapping for me. Before some very high prices in Feb. 2013, I had never shipped any "finished" (dried, fleshed skins) fur to one of the 2 big North American auction houses because I didn't know if my handling, especially of fatty skins such as raccoon, would stand high standards. But after seeing the prices people got at the NAFA (North American Fur Auction) Feb. 2013 sales, I got tired of selling to middle men and dug out what I had in the freezer (msotly coon) and sent them up. My highest coon went for $27 and my lowest, a larger one in decline in late winter for $10 (I'm not counting a $7 one that took a close range 12 gauge shotgun blast--not mine-- to its upper back). My grades for the May sale weren't too bad but room for improvement so the next year I build a much better fleshing system based on how some folks on one of the trapping forums did and got a higher quality fleshing knife and went at it. I think it was in 2014 when I had my first "Select" grade but the coon market was softening already and it took 4 sales to clear all of my coon except 1 dink that probably never should have been sent up.

Raccoon fur tends to have "regions" here in the States and in Canada where they are found. I happen to live in an area that tends to have the 2 more desired regions that are used for heavy trim wear although my colors tend to be weak (4 & 5s with 1 &2s being the most favored--can't help that). My overall averages by the end of the 2014 sales season for all the coon I had sold at auction in those 2 years was north of $15. I'm not a fast coon processor so $10 is sort of a mental "break point" if I would still want to put the time into my efforts. The 2015 was a tough year for all wild fur except for a certain fraction of the coyote market-- light colored western heavies out of the Can prairie provs, MT, and maybe ND and maybe a few in neighboring states. Some of these individual skins were going for over $100 US. Most of the other wild fur was fast slipping in price with low overall "clearances' of fur at auction (the company would "buy back" the skin if the limits they placed on them were not met). I shipped 40 coon and sold only 13 during all the sales in 2015. The price still wasn't too bad but just couldn't move them.

The 2016 auction sales have been about as bad as people predicted. Of the lef over coon, I managed to sell 4 for a $15 average during the first sale but overall coon clearances were 20% or less so NAFA decided to offer about a quarter million coon hides with no limits at their recent auction to "unplug" the pipeline. Well, they end up selling all of the coon that had no limits, some of them being pretty good grades, but at drastically lower prices, what the market will "bear" although a lot were bought by speculators and will never leave the NAFA warehouse until prices rebound. The main wild fur market for North America is Russia and they have been basically no shows no for nearly 2 years because their currency the ruble has flat lined against the US dollar because of the low oil prices. The Chinese, the Koreans, and some Eastern Euros and Italians buy some fur for their domestic markets but also mostly as manufacturers for the Russian market.

I had great clearances at this last sale, selling 22 out of 26 coon I had up there (including 3 new ones I had sent this year) but my overall average for these were $6.35. As bad as this sounds there were guys that had $4+ averages and some some southern coon and other less desired grades down below $2 averages. A school of hard knocks lesson about the volatility of a luxury commodity. I think next November I;m going to concentrate on shooting a good number of northern mallards and geese than chasing coons around the countryside although I might try running a coyote snare line in December.

So here's part 2, looking at fur prices over time with adjustments to inflation and what money value means at different points in contemporary economic history.

One of my colleagues on my trapping forum posted this recently about the crazy late 1970s and early 1980s high inflation, high interest rates era.

trapperick:

All previous records for returns on Pennsylvania furs were broken during the 1979-80 marketing year, according to final figures compiled by the Game Commission. During the year licensed raw fur dealers purchased 815,087 pelts taken by state trappers and hunters. $11,340,544 was an all time record.

Dealers bought-
291,496 Raccoons for $6,116,305, an average of $20.98 per pelt.
323,579 Muskrats, which brought a total of $2,014,924 an overage of $6.23 each.
26,098 Red Foxes bought in the state returned $1,212,413 for an average of $46.46 per pelt.
28,525 Gray Foxes for $1,146,533 for an average of $40.19 per pelt.
121,934 Opossums for $494,850 an average of $4.06 per pelt.
5,883 Beavers which sold for $213,543 and average of $36.30 per pelt.
5,734 Minks for $112,559 an average of $19.63 per pelt.
10,783 Skunks purchased for $26,944 an overage of $2.50 per skin.
1,055 Weasels which returned $2,473, or $2.34 each.

These figures only represented furs harvested in Pennsylvania by hunters and trappers and bought by Pennsylvania licensed raw fur dealers.
Furs shipped or transported out of state by the trapper and/or hunter or held for his or her own use are not included in the tabulations.
*This information was taken from Pennsylvania Game News magazine dated January 1984.

This was posted on another site but just had to share.

I looked up the dollar comparison from 1979 to 2016. $1.00 in 1979 = $3.49 in 2016. So, if fur prices stayed at the current rate of inflation this what today's fur prices would be.

Raccoon $76.71
Muskrat $21.74
Red Fox $162.15
Gray Fox $140.26
Opossum $14.17
Beaver $126.69
Mink. $68.72
Skunks. $8.72
Weasels $8.17

My reply today:

Interesting stuff tRick!! Obviosuly fur was riding an enormous bubble at that time and probably way over valued.

So it if takes a 3.49x of 1979 $$ to equal the inflated currency of 2016, can we go in reverse? Can we take what we got in this year's sales and divide by 3.49??

My 22 out of 26 coon that sold at the last NAFA sale went for a $6.35 acverage. So divide that by 3.49 and we get $1.82 in value in 1979 dollars. My 2 rats 2.25/3.39= 64 cents a piece in 1979, a $13 beaver would be $3.72 and a $10 red fox would be $2.86., etc. etc.

I worked on a bridge construction crew during the summer in 1982 and 1983 and started out at $5.90 an hour which I thought wasn't too bad. If a guy was good (not me) could he do 3.5 coons an hour all the way from skinning to put on on a board looking fine? Probably so for a lot of guys. Obviously the hyper-inflated fur of the late 1979/80 would have been better but interest rates on loans were also pushing 20% at the time. So if you happened to be lucky to make hay during those days, you made bank. If you did it year to year, bubbles go away, crashes happen, and overall averages emerge.

A toast to the next fur bubble, may you be riding when (and if) it happens!!

I guess the moral of the story is if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Sort of interesting how some of the base metals, especially copper, probably have such commodity swings but copper might be more stable over time than fur because its needed in a modern economy and wild fur probably not so much. So to all you Cu hoarders out there, a toast that you may also ride the next Cu bubble although who knows when that will happen and for how log a run it will go !!

Leave the poor critters alone, recycle more metal.

When they stop reproducing and causing hell for various landowners, I might. Until that happens, I'm part of the management system just like road kill and distemper. But at the current prices I think those other lethal aspects of "management" will probably be more active during the coming year. Are you against hunting as well??

No I am not against hunting if you eat what you kill. I just don't see the need to kill an animal just to make $10 on its fur.