What happened to the price of STa"M????
As I'm sure all in the business know, the price of Sifrei Torah, Tefillin and Mezuzos have gone up lately.
Furthermore there is a big shortage of items available and sofrim are getting offered more money by desperate wholesalers and retailers who do not have enough stock to meet their demand.
Below is a link to an excellent article from a Chabad news website that really explains whats going on in layman's terms.
I found this article useful to forward to balebatim and customers who were upset or querying the increase in prices.
Thank you. Mezuzahs are certainly scarce, at all price levels. Parshios are better but not as easily accessible as they had been. I'm not sure how many sofrim left the field. Certainly more are writing seforim now due to losses from Covid and Meron. A major dealer of sifrei Torah suggested that wealthy people had significantly more disposable income available due to less spending during Covid, no Pesach hotel, vacations or evenings out and likely some of them chose to purchase sifrei Torah. This has also created a shortage of sifrei Torah/sofrim to write seforim,
ReplyDeleteMany sofrim wrote less during Covid as children were home and they spent more time babysitting or couldn't concentrate if they wrote at home. Some stopped for a while because they couldn't/wouldn't go to the mikva. I'd have expected the sofrim to be back to their regular schedules but the supply is still well below the demand.
Wholesale pricing has increased around 10-20%. The one plus to come out of this is that sofrim are finally getting better pay, which they deserve. I expect that the the supply/demand issue will eventually improve and prices may settle somewhat, albeit not to what they used to be.
I agree with R' Askotzky that it was more sofrim that were not working as much last year which now has a small shortage although I have only heard of a shortage in mezuzahs here in Eretz Yisrael. I believe another reason for this was the lack of price increases in mezuzahs over the past. Only sofrim that have no other jobs usually would want to write mezuzahs which do not pay as well as sefer torah, tefillin or megillahs. Wholesalers are finally increasing the price to coax sofrim to write mezuzahs.
ReplyDelete