I know I have been gone awhile...

[ecchi]

Originally Posted by CD Smith

$150 for hand-carved art like that does sound cheap. I wonder why it's so cheap?

Not cheap for hand carved art if you know where to shop. I collect hand carved netsuke, and I rarely pay over $20 for a good new one (ironically often a lot more for second hand ones - but they are antiques) and over 50% of the new ones I have, I got for under $10. The trick is to buy from China, the Chinese work for a lot less per hour than we do, and will often carve wood/bone/etc in the evenings for extra pin money, then sell for peanuts!

Weirdly the most expensive netsuke style item I ever tried to buy was at auction, and went way over what I could afford to pay. That one was not hand carved, it was mass produced plastic and given away in a box of Crackerjack!