This is sort of on-topic for the thread and you may find it of interest. The prices I have been paying for EIR over the last 3 years has jumped quite a bit and the quality has dropped at the same time as is mentioned above.
One of the dealers I buy EIR from actually is a broker in India and has been filling me in on some of the politics of the EIR trade within India. Until some of these political issues betwen the regions are settled (in India), the price for this wood will continue to rise as production and harvesting of the tress will continue to slow down. This will drive the prices for this wood even higher and you will see a lot of the existing inventory of lower grade sets being used to fill in while the unrest is evident.
I have seen with my own eyes large warehouses of Honduran Mahogany that is sitting here in the states but cannot be distributed because of some of the red tape of the CITES treaty. Prices are rising and the supply (at least to the states) is dropping because of some of this red tape in importing the wood. In the mean time, supplies are still pretty abundant for the Honduran, but there may come a time when the blemish free wood we have been used to seeing is gone and all that is left to build with is lesser quality woods unless some of the restrictions are eased or at least clarification is made on existing stocks of the wood that currently exist.
I agree that the african substitutes for the Mahogany are pretty good woods and make excellent tonewoods.
In the mean time, I am stocking up on domestic tonewoods so that I can build with woods that are not endangered and for the time being easy to acquire. I feel that at some point there will be a demand on these domestic woods that will make them harder to find also.
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Regards,
Ken Hodges
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