UK silver clay price review

As metal clay artists in the UK will now now, the price of Art Clay will rise significantly on 1st June 2012. The Metal Clay Academy website published this statement yesterday. 

Art Clay in the UK will be increasing in price from 1st June by around 30%. Initial indicative pricing puts a retail 50g pack of Art Clay Silver 650 up from £109 to £142.50 including VAT.
The public announcement from Metal Clay Ltd, one of the UK distributors is as follows:-
"Change in Art Clay pricing - Aida has managed to keep the prices of metal clay as low as possible for a long time but, due to the historical high rate of the Japanese Yen appreciation against the US Dollar and Euro since last year, combined with the continuous high price of gold and silver and increases in manufacturing costs in Japan, they now need to be more realistic with how they price their products, in order to keep manufacturing and supplying us.

They’ve been discussing different solutions for recovery and protection of the current price. As a result, they’ve reached a decision to apply a new price change formula for Art Clay series products in order to be able to continue manufacturing and sales of their products.

Unfortunately, this means a price increase on the 1 June 2012.

Following this price increase, AIDA will review their prices every quarter of the year. The price review will be based on a couple of factors: if silver and/or gold prices has increased or decreased more than 10%, as well as major changes in the international currency exchange rate of JPY against USD and Euro. A decision will be made based on this and the prices will be adjusted accordingly. "

This is a real blow for those of us teaching metal clay and using it ourselves to make and sell silver jewellery.
I have done a review of the current prices of silver clay in the UK which you can see below.

Here are a few disclaimers!

I have tried to find all retailers of Art Clay silver in the UK. I used the UK suppliers list from the Metal Clay Academy 

• I am sure that I will have missed some, please accept my apologies for this. If you notice an omission please comment below and I will check out that stockist

• Some of the suppliers on the Metal Clay Academy list were no longer trading or did not have Art Clay for sale at the time of checking (Tuesday 25th April 2012). These suppliers have not been included. 

• The suppliers are listed purely in the order I accessed them

• This review does not included all Art Clay clay items. I have listed Art Clay 650 lump clay in 7g, 10g, 20g and 50g

• An X means that they did not have a listing for this item

• This, of course, does not take into account postage costs which will vary between stockists 

• I have not included stockists from other countries that will ship to the UK or any websites that price in euros

• I have included a weblink to each shop in the table

• Any errors in transcribing current prices are my own. If you do notice an error please comment (politely!) and I will change it as soon as I can

Art Clay	Jewellery Maker	Metal clay	Palmers	London jewellery supplies	Polymer clay pit	Art clay studios, Essex	Bead cellar	Chununga – have a buy more save more offer
7g	12.95	16.25	16.25	16.29	16.95	16.25	18.81	X
10g	X	23.80	23.80	23.95	23.75	23.80	23.80	23.80
20g	39.95	44.35	44.35	44.35	46.85	44.35	44.35	44.35
50g	99.95	109	109	109	116	109	109	109

Art Clay	Cooksons	EJR beads	PMC shop	Red Rose Jewellery	Clarice	Silver Clay Creations	Rockin beads
7g	16.20	14.40	16.0	X	X	15.99	16.25
10g	23.76	X	23.50	23.80	X	22.99	23.80
20g	44.28	X	44.0	X	44.35	43.99	44.35
50g	109.19	X	109	X	X	108.99	X

I hope that those currently using Art Clay 650 will find this information helpful. This is a snapshot blog post of todays prices to help Art Clay users in the UK.

Addition
Please note that Pajed also sell Art Clay, they currently have slow dry for sale
Creative Glass, Rochester also sell Art Clay in the UK. When I accessed their site the pricing was in euros for some reason so I decided not to include them as it wasn't a direct comparison