Business Today;NEWLN:Sable: Soviets play hard ball with soft commodity – upi.com

LENINGRAD, U.S.S.R. — The only thing that’s soft about the Soviet fur industry is the fur itself.
At the July Leningrad fur auction, Soviet sellers held a traditional hard line on the commodity that annually brings in about $100 million in hard currency.

Tass, the official Soviet news agency, said buyers — 18 of them American — bought all 51,000 sable pelts offered for sale on July 24, the second day of the 5-day multi-fur auction.
But a sharp-eyed London fur dealer said when bidders were slow to respond to a lot of sable, gavel-wielding representatives of the Soviet fur trade organization Soyuzpushnina withdrew it from the sale — to be offered again at one of two other auctions this year in hopes of a better price.
Prices were bolstered as 200 buyers from 20 countries fought to pay thousands of dollars for a single pelt to meet the huge new international demand for the rare fur, the finest in the world.

It takes up to 60 pelts to make a single coat. Yet one wild sable pelt went for $480 and a ranch sable pelt for $420. Both went to Americans.
Russian lynx, a white-bellied, ferocious cat, garnered a record $3,600 each. A British dealer bought all 301 skins for an astounding $1.1 million, shutting out the U.S. competition.
Ivan the Terrible made the export of sable breeding stock punishable by death. The jealous attitude of the Soviet Union still holds towards its monopoly on the rare, fuzzy relative of the weasel, as noted in the popular thriller book and movie ‘Gorky Park.’
A yearly limit of 120,000 is placed on the sale of pelts at auction tomaintain the quality of the skins and bolster the price. As with any rare commodity, the price of sable is rocketing — but not as fast as the demand for coats made of sable pelts.
‘Sable coats sell as fast as we make them,’ said David Wolfe, senior vice president of Neiman-Marcus department store .
Pelts offered in July will be sold in U.S. stores late in 1985 with price tags ranging from $10,000 for a lined raincoat to $150,000 for a full-length coat.

‘Prices have increased tremendously,’ said David Mechutan, 54, whose Mechutan Fur Corp. annually buys up to 30 percent of the Soviet sable crop. ‘I’ve seen prices go up 40 percent to 50 percent just in the past three to four years.’
Led by Mechutan, the Americans swept the sable sale, Tass said. American women — and a growing number of men — are the biggest market for sable coats.
But the U.S bidders are facing competition from market newcomers. Buyers from Japan and Hong Kong are adding to demand, and putting upward pressure on prices.
Soviet forests, natural breeding grounds of the sable, are receding. Although breeding in captivity is difficult, ranching seemed the way to go and nine Soviet ranches now produce a larger, darker skin.
Soyuzpushnina promotes this ranched sable as the best-quality fur available. Fur traders don’t agree.
They’ve gotten the ranch sable too dark,’ said Ed Graf, co-owner of New York-based Ben Kahn Furs. ‘There’s no character in the color now. For that, you need light tips.
‘Barguzinski sable is still the best, not the farmed fur as the Soviets say.’
Buyers wonder whether the product will be permanently altered, leaving demand to adjust to whatever is offered by the Soviets.

An apocryphal story making the rounds at the auction illustrated the Soviet intent to maintain that monopoly.
Buyers said an American sold mink breeding stock to the Soviets in the early 1960s in exchange for sable breeders. The Soviets got a fine set of animals from which they built a ranch business that produces 11 million minks annually.
But when the Soviet sables arrived, the story goes, the U.S. breeders discovered the animals had been neutered.

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