Official Luthiers Forum!

Back about a year ago a friend called to tell me that a woman in California had been busted for selling real tortoise shell picks. Well, I got a call this afternoon from the person who had originally supplied the story. They said that today's Santa Rosa Press Democrat was carrying an article on the woman, who it turns out I have indeed known for a few years, although wasn't aware that she was dealing contraband tortoise. She's Chinese and living in the states, and travels to China frequently on business as an importer of violin and guitar making parts and materials. Very cute and petite, but also a hard-ball business woman. A quick search just now found it on the paper's website at: http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20 ... hell-picks. He also says that once Ms. Song was video-taped selling some picks at a West Coast bluegrass festival, her home business was then raided while she was away on a trip to China, and besides finding a lot of tortoise the federal agents also confiscated her computer which had files on everyone she'd sold picks to. She was supposedly buying them in China for about $.27/each, then reselling for $7.00.

As even this sketchy newspaper article recognizes, a more or less effective argument can be made for salvaging and recycling old antique items such as boxes, bracelets, and combs (especially if damage has ruined their collectible value), but it's another issue entirely if the material involved has been recently taken from endangered turtles which were swimming freely only a short time before. In practice, the law doesn't necessarily recognize the difference, primarily because once an artifact has been converted to picks it becomes impossible to prove those picks came from antiques and not raw back plates.