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Comment by marricks | Hacker News Reader

It’s why you gotta burn ivory. When something is a luxury item for the wealthy rules don’t really matter you have to destroy the market.

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Or explain people that ivory won't treat their ED. Or spread the rumor that ivory makes you flaccid.

With misinformation these days people will just think the government is trying to keep them from becoming healthy

I thought that was rhino horn.

Unless it is a piano keyboard, because musicians are aware of this and so the only pianos with ivory keyboards have ivory from nearly 100 years ago. There would be interest in new ivory by a few (generally because they have an antique piano with one broken key), but they will demand proof that the ivory was sustainably harvested (There was a park a few years back overcrowd with elephants that was looking into providing such certification, though last I've heard they haven't figured out how to do this)

The technician that works on our piano reglued some of the ivory. He said that, in the worst case, he could give us a replacement, since he has a pile of antique ivory he got from the keys of ruined/rebuilt pianos.

If we ever fully restore the keys, we’d opt for not-ivory.

Every pre-WW2 piano I've seen was crooked beyond repair and untunable. I bet there are far more donor instruments than functioning ones, considering that a lot can happen in 70 years.

There are, but not all ivory looks alike so finding a match is hard. Which is why someone who wants to restore an antique piano to new would be interested in new ivory if a sustainable source is available.

This must depend a lot on the humidity and temperature where the piano has been stored and used.

I have a more than one hundred years old Austrian piano (made shortly before the start of the First WW), and it still works fine.

>but they will demand proof that the ivory was sustainably harvested

yes, i'm sure this is true for 100% of people buying fancy pianos, and "proof of sustainable harvest" isn't at all a loophole that gets used to sustain an illegal ivory trade.

The music industry is very good about this. Which is actually easy because there is no current source of sustainable harvest ivory. (and when there was a source it was in such limited quantities that no major manufacture would bother)

Ivory isn’t only for the rich customers of intricate ivory carving but also the run of the mill guy and gal going to the Chinese medicine apothecary.

Not saying this exonerates the practice or anything --just that rich folk in Hong Kong/mainland CN aren’t the only ones propping the market.

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