VALUE OF AMBERGRIS

False Information

Anyone can quickly search the internet for the “value of ambergris” and they will find a barrage of false and misleading information. The facts are that no one in the ambergris trade really even knows where these suggestions of astronomical value come from?

It is no mystery that ambergris is extremely rare, with demand far outweighing supply and that it’s value is considerably high for a natural organic material. However, the suggestions made in most internet searches could not be further from the truth!

One can find many a tabloid article and news report from all over the globe stating that fisherman and beachcombers alike have found a piece of ambergris worth some astronomical price tag. Stated values can be found from the high end retail values all the way up to the mythological, at hundreds of dollars per gram, with most of these reports stating values in the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars for the particular item found!

Now while its true that a piece of ambergris, if large enough, can fetch the finder a million dollar plus figure, the reality is that nearly all of these reports are based on and perpetuating, false information. While also, nearly always being stated towards items that are not even real ambergris!

One example would be the handful of sellers on both Etsy and eBay where you can find all manner of items labeled as ambergris offered for sale for some astronomical price. But be aware! These are all false items, nearly all of them are not real ambergris and the prices being asked are entirely conjured from thin air. Another horrible reality to know, but its also true that hundreds of pounds of items that are not real ambergris end up getting sold and passed of as such every year.

The internet is a jungle and one has to be so careful what they take as fact and what as fiction, especially in regards to a mysterious material such as ambergris, unfortunately even the picture on the Wikipedia page for ambergris is not actually ambergris, its a piece of wax!

Different values for different varieties of ambergris in different markets

Ambergris is found in several different varieties based around it’s color, this is almost entirely due to the age of each piece of ambergris and the conditions it has gone through in that time.

When ambergris is freshly excreted, it is a darker, softer, more pungent material and when discovered in this form, it’s value is limited and it has much less market interest. The longer ambergris floats about in the worlds oceans, or travels from one shoreline to the next, the more it oxidizes, ages, and refines.

This process brings about dramatic changes in its chemical makeup and thus in its function and scent. Slowly changing form darker to lighter colors and from pungent to sweet olfactory presentations. The eventual outcome is that it will become pure white, both inside and out, and refine into a sweet and delicate scent profile. Ancient white pieces of ambergris like this have been carbon dated to nearly a thousand years old, and after all of that time spent traveling the oceans of the world, it is this finest grade of ambergris that is the most highly prized.

Softer black fresh ambergris and the more common medium brown varieties will be sought by one type of market and application, while the aged and finer ancient white and gray pieces will be sought by another. Typically, European perfumers and Royal families prefer the finer aged and refined pieces for their stronger fixative properties and their softer, sweeter base notes. Whereas the Middle Eastern fragrance and incense markets will prefer the stronger and more robust animalic noted brown varieties. While most of the softer black younger pieces will end up in the traditional medicinal markets of the Far East.

And so as one might expect from such diversity in demand and variety in marketplace, ambergris will demand a higher price for the older and more scarce pieces, and lesser so for the younger, more common, darker pieces.

So how much is ambergris actually worth?

To fully understand the value of a pieces of ambergris, one needs to understand that there are entire market structures and market functions unique to the ambergris world, together with the normal functions of economics and commerce that all come together to create the value that ambergris has today, just like in any other market for a natural and rare commodity.

In history past, ambergris was affectionately nick named “floating gold” and this was not far form the truth. For some 3,000 years, ambergris has been traded at a market value nearly pound for pound with the value of metallic gold and up until about 30 years ago, that was still the case.

In the mid 1990s gold had a market price of around $400 per troy ounce and one could have traded an ounce of ambergris for an ounce of gold at that time. However, today gold has far surpassed this former value and yet ambergris remains in about the same region.

A further similarity between these two commodities being the consumptive value vs. the market value vs. the procured raw value. What many in the world do not understand is that when you go to a jewelry store to buy gold jewelry, you are paying a retail or “consumptive” value for the gold, about a 35% premium over what is considered “market value” or “melt value”. But no gold miner ever sells their raw gold to the refiner at the consumptive value, no not even at the market value. Gold miners or anyone supplying a raw commodity to the beginning end of a market supply chain will sell their wares for about 35% under market value.

This is all a part of the tiers of market commerce and supply chain distribution and ambergris is no exception.

In this 21st century, the consumptive value of ambergris, the retail value paid by a consumer who buys a niche bottle of perfume or attar or an ambergris collector who buys a fine piece of ambergris to consume, is roughly around about a combined average of $32 dollars USD per gram or just about $15,000 per pound.

Subsequently, the “market value” of ambergris, or the value of the largest volume of wholesale trade for market transactions to industrial “user” clients, is sitting at a combined average of about $22 per gram, or about $10,000 per pound.

And so accordingly, an ambergris finder can expect to receive a first procurement sale value of between $9 and $16 per gram for their raw ambergris find, for it’s dry weight according to it’s particular color and quality, an average of about $6,000 per pound.

This first sale valuation is fairly commonplace across the globe with exception only in underdeveloped nations where the business transactions taken to procure the ambergris incur a higher expense, or in nations where there is a government imposed royalty taxation on the sale of the commodity, as is the case in The Bahamas and the Maldive Islands where the first sale procurement price is lesser due to the imposition of such a tax.

But one thing is always certain, the finder will always receive the largest portioned share of the total value of any piece of ambergris found and sold into the market!