Metal clay massive price increase

With this huge jump in the price of metal clay in mind, has anybody ever ordered silver clay from the US, or is there some kind of customs restriction? I ask this because there is a company who sell dry powder silver clay for $80 for 50g but they do not post outside of the US except to Canada. I have a fair few friends in the US and Canada who I am sure would buy and post to me if indeed it is not forbidden.

The dry powder clay has the binders already in it and all one needs to do is add water, and though I do not use it often I do from time to time like to work with precious metal clay but at the current prices ( a 30% increase in the last few weeks) it is prohibitively expensive. I also cannot quite understand why there is this huge jump in clay prices as bullion certainly has not risen so dramatically.

I sometimes get stuff posted from the US by friends, partly because the company postage is ludicrous, minimum orders of $300 and then $70 postage. If you do get it sent, ask them to mark it as a low value gift and it should miss customs.

Thank you Medusa, I just in the last half hour sorted out with a friend to chance it, I will now tell her to mark the package as crafting materials and diminish the actual value. I will let you all know how it goes because the price differential is enormous.

First off can I say that posting just the bare powder sounds like a really good idea as with madeup clay you're paying to post water. #-o

I would caution you though on all these schemes to mark the customs declaration as 'gift' or of a lower value. HMRC have a term 'The importer of Record' that's you, and it's a legal requirement that you ensure that the sender fills in the customs form correctly, it's tempting to take a chance and nine times out of ten it will work, but when it doesn't the goods can be seized they won't be returned to sender so you won't get a refund and it will be up to you to argue with HMRC as to why they should release the goods to you.

The only way round this would be to find a EU supplier, then there's no need for any customs declaration.

More info from the HMRC website.

Hope that helps, sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Regards,

Pembroke.

good point pembroke, but if it is a friend sending him the stuff then it is a gift, no?

I kind of ignored him as I felt it was a little on the anoraky side. I would not dream of asking a commercial enterprise to "adjust" the customs form in my favour as indeed I would not for a customer of mine, but like you say Medusa between friends for no fiscal benefit well...................