Chasing Mammoths: Stuff You Should Know!
Last Updated: April 2024
Chasing Mammoths encompasses Schindler Gold and Acre & Stone
I started Schindler Gold 10 years ago as a kind of sideline to Schindler Carvings, my mammoth ivory carving business. When Covid hit and everything shut down, I took that time and went heavy into my gold work. I stopped apologizing for the price of gold by making my jewelry lightweight and started making my gold work heavier and more luxurious in a way that best expressed the qualities of the gold. At about this time, Parker and I started brainstorming ideas to take my work to the market with his gold and Acre & Stone materialized. So now I have two collections: Schindler Gold is my foundation where I use exclusively .880 (88%) Barker Creek gold and houses the entirety of my designs, and Acre and Stone is a collection of select designs made exclusively with Parker’s “Little Flake Mine” gold.
Our Mission:
We Mine, Make, and Market our raw gold into timeless jewelry that is true to the original creek that bore it. We link the provenance of our gold from its source through its crafting to its delivery to you. Our story becomes your story.
Our gold has a deep story and it has a soul! It is from creeks footed in the perilous history of the Klondike Gold Rush, creeks you can locate on Google. It is mined by people we know from TV or can be seen on our site and who have a name. It is crafted by people of the north with a deep and passionate connection to the fields, the gold, and the people who mine it. It is jewelry with a feel, weight, color, and softness of high karat raw gold that is unlike anything else……
How We Price Our Gold:
Our price is based on the gold weight and is updated constantly to the always changing market price.
Our Acre and Stone collection is made exclusively with Parker’s raw Little Flake Mine gold which assays at .830 (83%, about 20K). 50% of our price is the melt value of the gold, the other 50% covers the hand crafting and all the expenses…. Nearly unprecedented in the jewelry world.
My Schindler Gold collection is raw Barker Creek gold which assays at .880 (a bit under 21.5k). 55% of the price is the melt value and the other 45% covers all crafting and expenses.
Yes, Raw High Karat Gold is Softer Than 14k:
The difference in purity of our raw unrefined gold is immediately obvious, it’s brighter in color, heavier than seems real, and the luxurious feel of it on your fingers is different than factory processed and chemically hardened 14k (58%) or 18k (75%) gold. Our simple, timeless designs accommodate our golds’ malleable nature. Our rings and bracelets are hammered for the gorgeous texture as well as to harden it making it more durable. Our chain feels luxurious and silky because our gold is high karat, natural, and true to the creek is was mined.
!4k hardened gold does have it’s place. We use 14k wires in our post earrings because our high karat gold is too soft for this use
Is our Klondike Gold 24k Pure Gold?
Raw gold in nature is never pure. It is a combination of gold, silver, copper and other trace elements. The gold in our jewelry is true to the creek from which it was mined. Just as every Klondike creek has its own rich history the gold from each creek has its own unique combination of these elements. This is its geochemical signature – It’s fingerprint!
The combination of these elements is its signature.
Parkers gold assays at .830, so it is 83% gold and 17% silver. My Barker creek gold assays higher at .880, 88% gold and 12% silver. Each piece of jewelry is stamped with our logo, the assay (purity), and the creek it was mined.
Gold must be refined to make it .999 pure. I like working .999 gold but I love the stories, the people, and just the soul of my raw Klondike gold.
Each creek holds its own tale of discovery and depravity, fortunes found and wasted, and of redemption. Jack London, Robert Service, and Pierre Berton captured these creeks in stories and poems. “White Fang”, “Gold Rush”, Mitchener’s “Alaska”, “Call of the Wild”, and “Klondike Fever” are all movies, books, and TV show’s inspired by the miners’ tireless drive. The story of each creek, of each miner, of the native history, and all the way back to the woolly mammoths and giant sloths of the Pleistocene is part of the story, part of the soul of my gold. “Klondike Fever” is a great read and I recommend it!
These stories stay intact in my jewelry. I never mix my gold from creek to creek. Parkers “Little Flake Mine” gold is never mixed with gold from other miners. My Barker Creek gold is never mixed with gold from Bonanza, or Last Chance, or Henderson….. The geochemical fingerprint and its gold rush stories stay intact in each piece of our work. This is its provenance. Our golds provenance remains true in all our work.
Shipping:
We offer free shipping in the US! We supplement our international shipping and only charge $85 USD. Our international shipping is through UPS and is limited to the countries where we can fully insure. It’s still a work in progress but we’ve got it pretty much figured out. Please keep in mind that when shipping outside the US you will be charged an excise tax by your country. Most countries seem to be charging around 20% which you will be charged upon delivery….. Death and Taxes 🙂 Please let me know how the experience goes for you so we can continue to make improvements!