After a 20-year love affair, Melanie Schaefer decided to branch out: to copper, brass, and bronze, that is.
Silver, she says, has become too pricey for artistic monogamy.
“In the last year, the price of the metal that I use has tripled, plus some,” explains Schaefer, a jewelry maker who, until 2026, has worked almost exclusively in sterling silver. “It’s been pretty scary. I’ve had a good year of business, because I have great customers, and a nice product, and I’m grateful, but I did not raise my prices fast enough with the rise of the price of metal to profit as much as I usually do. So, I have some serious evaluation going on.”
In 2026, Schaefer’s galvanizing for change: the incorporation of different, less expensive metals—the aforementioned copper, brass, and bronze—as she fashions new earrings, pendants, and necklaces to sell. All new printed promotional materials that hint at her creations beyond silver. Taking time to hand-hew silver sheets fashioned from the scrap that litters the studio floor (everything from tiny silver filings to the trimmed corners and wire end bits she sheds as she creates), instead of buying them, to save on materials costs.
And, inevitably, she sighs, higher prices.
So Schaefer’s silver disc earrings that sport delicate, stamped mushrooms on a hammered pebble ground that were $48? They’ll likely cost $60 in 2026—or, possibly, more.
“The jeweler in me is freaking out a little bit, because it’s a little earth-shattering when the price of your raw materials goes up so fast, and by so much,” says Schaefer, who trained as a painter. “I’m going to have to use my creativity in new ways. It’s going to force me out of my box—probably a good thing after 20 years.”
Metals’ mettle
It’s a moment for precious metals.
“Gold and silver have always served as ‘safe haven’ assets,” explains Marc Santugini, a UVA economics professor. “When people worry about the dollar losing value, inflation, or general economic uncertainty, they tend to flock to precious metals as a store of value.”
Last October, gold hit $4,000 an ounce for the first time in history. Just 10 weeks later, it struck $5,000 an ounce.
Silver’s movements have been even more dramatic. After a previous highs of $50 an ounce in 1980 and then again in 2011, silver retreated, fetching between $20 to $25 per ounce for years. In 2024, the average per-ounce price of silver reached $28.27. By 2025, it fetched $40 an ounce. So far in 2026, silver’s struck both a record-breaking high of $121 an ounce and its biggest single-day decline in history just a day later when it melted back to $83 an ounce.
As of press time, gold had returned to more than $5,000 an ounce, and silver was going for $94.99 an ounce.
“The recent surge (gold is up over 60 percent in 2025!) has been driven by a combination of geopolitical tensions, Central Bank buying, tariff uncertainty, and concerns about currency stability,” Santugini says. “Dips often happen when some of that uncertainty temporarily eases, or when investors take profits.”
That recently happened after President Donald Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve—a sign, economists said, of a strengthening U.S. dollar and economic stability. That day, gold and silver (and the stock market) took a nosedive, losing more than 10 percent and 30 percent, respectively—in a single day.
Amid the pricing chaos, coin dealers and jewelry shops have flung open their doors to buy customers’ stashes of everything from silver candlesticks to ornate tea services and gold and silver jewelry. In mid-January, a reporter’s small pile of unmated silver earrings, several sterling bracelets, a sterling brooch, two tarnished chains, and an antique silver creamer and sugar container fetched more than $600.
A fellow seller—who’d expected his modest cache to get “a couple hundred dollars maybe”—came out $900 richer.
At Jefferson Coin in Albemarle Square, staffers employed a velvet rope to keep turn-taking orderly as people lined up, many of them clutching flatware. Once a gift for newlyweds, silver forks, knives, and spoons are, today, getting scooped up for cash, says James Luck, who owns and operates the shop with his family.
Sellers say, “‘No one in my family wants it, none of my kids or grandkids want to inherit it, and no one wants sterling silver flatware sets anymore,’” Luck explains. “They don’t want to polish it, or take care of it. You can’t put it in the dishwasher, and, with silver at an all-time high, they see it as a great time to cash it in.”
It’s something of a turnaround for silver, which has often lived in gold’s shadow.
“Silver’s been this investment that people kind of stared at, kicked, and, for about a decade, said, ‘Do something,’” laughs Luck. “‘Are you going to move? Or stay between $20 and $30 and not go anywhere?’”
With the exception of a couple of weeks in early February when sterling sellers needed an appointment at Jefferson Coin—the result of backups at refineries nationwide that were taking in items to melt down and purify into bullion, Luck explains—the shop “never slowed down on buying.”
“Now silver is starting to run and get to all-time highs and it’s got a lot of people excited about the silver market because they see it actually can move,” he says.
Of course, these metals are for more than just adornment. Beyond their luster, both gold and silver are durable, efficiently conduct electrical current, and never corrode. Silver is used in the creation of electric vehicle batteries, for AI components, and in solar panels, high-performance computer chips, and semiconductors. A thin veneer of gold plates electronics from circuit boards to transistors, and is even used to make specialized surgical equipment.
But investing in precious metals isn’t for the faint of heart. Buying silver and gold requires a stomach for risk and volatility, investors say, some of whom urge caution or reconsideration.
“Moving away from precious metals,” says Rodney Lake, director of the George Washington University Investment Institute, a business professor, and vice dean, “and toward the general economy and equities is preferred.”
Pricing paroxysm
For Charlottesville jewelry maker Jason McLeod, gold and silver price volatility has made pricing and estimates endlessly “tricky.” He checks market prices at least daily—sometimes multiple times a day.
“You pretty much have to,” McLeod says. “When we finish a piece, we put it into our production inventory, the weight of the gold and silver gets recorded, and I determine the price that day.”
For already-made items listed for sale on his website, he’s updated prices a few times since last fall, particularly for items, like silver chains, that he doesn’t make but sells.
But custom orders—which comprise
a lot of his work—can be ticklish, because, “the price I quote is based on what it
[the metals’ price] was that day, but
then the final price is based on the day when I actually buy those materials for their piece” which usually take eight to 10 weeks to make.
A lot can happen in those weeks, McLeod says.
“These last couple of years, I have to tell people that I’m going to do a 50 percent deposit based on the estimate, but, sometimes, because it takes that amount of time [to complete a piece], the balance is sometimes higher than what we thought it was going to be.”
Rising metals prices occasionally work in customers’ favor, though, especially when they bring McLeod their old gold and silver to “go toward” something new.
“I’ve had a couple of people get checks back,” McLeod says. “They made a deposit, and I said to them, ‘This is what I think it’s worth,’ then we made their piece, but then the amount of the gold meant that they got their piece back and a check.”
Fork in the road
McLeod eyeballs the tarnished silver fork on his cluttered worktable, which sits in a litter of silver and gold scraps, half dollar-sized capsules with winking colored gemstones, a hulking manual metal press, and a Crock-Pot filled with “pickle juice” (a warm acid bath McLeod uses to clean silver jewelry after it’s been soldered).
“It’s a trip,” McLeod laughs, dangling the fork from his hand. “We’ve been using this for years to grab a thermoplastic that’s in boiling water, used for setting stone. This is worth a couple of hundred bucks now. Crazy.”
McLeod has made statement jewelry for more than 20 years. He uses a range of gemstones—tanzanite, black opals, diamonds, topaz, you name it—and almost exclusively silver and gold to set them. While he’s not interested in expanding his metals repertoire—“I’ve worked with copper and bronze, but they’re not what compels me,” he says—flux in the metals market has made him think hard about formulating new work, what stones and metals make the most economic sense to mate, and price points that are, increasingly, ticking up.
But silver will remain Schaefer’s go-to.
“I’m always going to be a silversmith, because I love working with it,” Schaefer says. “I love wearing silver, and I’ll always have silver. But the price of all the silver stuff I offer is going to go up considerably this year. And in an effort to keep myself relevant and offer nice, quality products at a lower price point I’m going to incorporate new metals, probably more copper, more brass, bronze. So, yeah, branching out.”
Her shifting 2026 business strategy will also include new design work, like enameling, something she’s been meaning to learn and try for years. While silver’s rise in price has been unsettling, it hasn’t clouded her outlook.
“I vend outside a lot, and I can’t control the weather,” says Schaefer, who regularly sells at the Farmer’s Market at IX and often opens her Singers Glen, Virginia, studio, which is a 1780s log cabin that sits atop an underground spring. “I used to get irritated, because it directly affects how much money I make, because nobody comes out for a show when it’s raining, for example, and I’ve spent hundreds of dollars to be at for the weekend.”
“Like the weather, I cannot control the metal market, so I’m trying not to let it personally get to me,” she adds. “And jewelry’s fun. Because there’s 20 rabbit holes you can go down, teach yourself a new technique, and you can keep going. I’m not going to let it derail me. But it requires a shift from what I’ve been doing.”
“Anyway, it’s good to grow,” she laughs, before adding, “A little forced growth.”
