coloring and selling sheds?

hangingmeat · Apr 16, 2012

I'm sure this has been tried- and i've never seen sheds that have been colored up close, so excuse my ignorance-

but I have a pile of shed horns that would be considered "hard whites"- no cracks, no chalk, just lost their color.

could a guy try one of these coloring methods, on some small samples to get good at it first, get them colored and sell them as "fresh browns"?

It just came up in conversation tonight, wondering how well these coloring methods look up close.
my first thought is that I'm sure up close you can tell a difference vs. the pictures we see on the internet and might acually LOWER the price.

What do you think?

guideman1 · Apr 16, 2012

I can tell a shed that has been stained compared to a shed that has been stained.Also it would be bad business on your part to do that.

ShowThemToMe · Apr 17, 2012

Kinda like a Used Cars Salesman ain't it?

"Never been Re-Painted" lol!

[font color=red size=redsize=18"face"]SHOW THEM TO ME![/font]
If You Love Your Country,SHOW THEM TO ME!

It's been a long hard ride
Got a ways to go
But this is still the place
That we all call home

bonepicker · Apr 17, 2012

I do some antler buying and I have had people try to sell me colored stuff as brown and I can tell the difference easily. There are many indicators and ways you can tell. Many antler buyers handle hundreds of pounds per day, they can tell the difference. I've got a couple guys that have tried it and I won't deal with them again, not because I can't tell but because I know they were trying to rip me off. Oddly those are the same guys that whine about grading and prices. If a dealer is still willing to do business with you after a stunt like that, he will definitely be giving you a lower price, because colored antlers are very difficult to sell. The craftsmen and artists that I sell to may color their antlers but they want to do it themselves so that they know exactly what has been done.
Most antler dealers have a long memory for who tried to take them and we talk and do business with other dealers often. If you want to try to fool the antler buyers, you better sell everything you have because if you can pull it off the one time, they will never buy from you again and many other dealers won't either.
Probably a better route to take is the honest one and to talk directly to an antler buyer and tell him what you have, he may be willing to give you an extra dollar or two per pound for it.

hangingmeat · Apr 22, 2012

I forgot about making this post.

Let me be clear- I'm not planning a great scam. It was more of a "I wonder if people do this" question.

I've heard of people taking sheds out and literally rubbing them on pine trees, just like the elk do, to get them brown again.

Again, I've never seen one up close, but is it works- would it be the same as selling brown antlers?
I'd rather figure out how to make something myself with them, but I'm just curious- thats all

GLEDEASY · Apr 22, 2012

LAST EDITED ON Apr-22-12 AT 08:08PM (MST)[p]I'll try to answer your question whether or not a shed looks natural after being colored based off of my attempts in re-coloring sheds. Obviously the more hard horned they are the better the outcome will be. Any cracking or weathering it's going to be hard to make it look really good. In any degree the amount of time and effort it would take to try and make them look natural enough to fool a buyer is not worth it nor would it be ethical as others have posted.

Have people tried it, I certainly wouldn't put it past anybody. But I'm sure the serious antler buyers can tell a re-color from an original.

Texcrantler · May 3, 2012

Once you color them they automatic go into the number 3 or chalk grade. but if there is no hairline cracking as you say, they will get brown price anyway! Dont color them!

groundhog · Jun 1, 2012

Lots of ways to try to fool the buyers but it is better to play it straight. One year at the Jackson hole sale some shed hunters from Big Sky,Mt took bundles of cracked white elk antlers and put them in the river for a few days. The idea was that they would soak up water and weigh more when they were sold. I am not sure what price they ended up getting because it was very obvious that somthin was up. Those antlers were dripping blood like crazy. By the end of the day those bundles were not white anymore they were a bright redish pink color.

hangingmeat · Jun 3, 2012

thanks for the reply's.
I did finally see a re-colored shed the other day and I don't know if it is normal, or if the guy did a bad job, but up close there is no way you could get away with it. I kinda think the guy just did a bad job though, as it didn't look near as good as some that I've seen in pictures on here

bonepicker · Jun 3, 2012

You can definitely recolor antlers to make them look good hanging on the wall, and you can get them so that they will look natural to most people. If you are wanting to recolor some older antlers to mount or something there are some good options out there. But if you are trying to color and restore an antler to the point that it looks identical to a fresh, natural brown when someone has it in their hands, you're going to have some difficulty. To recolor an antler perfectly it must be uncracked and if that is the case like Tex said, there is no reason to color it because many antler buyers will give you brown prices for faded but uncracked antler.