At 06:20 AM 8/19/99 -0700, Chris Kuenster (Entex) wrote:

>Cats Eyes make both an Electrum and a Gold bracelet. The gold is obviously
>better. These can usually be gotten fairly cheaply because jeweler must
>practice on these lowlevel stones before they can make the better gold
>items.

A *very* close friend of mine is a jeweler. He says the power of magic
jewelery comes from the metal used, which has to be enchanted before you
add the stone. Silver makes the least powerful, then electrum, gold, and
platinum. Those four metals represent increasing expense and increasing
difficulty of enchantment, in terms of the level of enchant spell used.

So the type of enchanted metal determines the power level.

The type of stone determines what's affected: saves against some hazard or
a personal characteristic such as strength or wisdom. Stones have widely
different monetary values.

The combination of which metal and which stone determines whether you get
earring, bracelet, veil or whatever. The jeweler can't choose.

Jewelers generally price what they make based on what it costs for
materials, and how badly people want the particular enhancement. Most
tradespeople seem to go for a price about double the cost of materials, to
cover their time and the failures that are especially painful with
expensive items.

Then there are some types of jewelery that jewelers can't make, such as
agility earrings.

Anyway that's what my friend Dweomerforge the enchanter and jeweler tells me.

Thrush