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Comment by woofie11 | Hacker News Reader

I don't get the economics here. The sword run around 300 euro in the online storefront, and claim to be 10-20 hours of work. I pay about 15-30 euro per hour of labor.

Toss in equipment, materials, labor, overhead, taxes, benefits, and all the other stuff, and I just don't see how this can be done. Either the income is McD's, or there's something fishy going on.

I'm also not clear what "last master swordsmith" even means.

Anyone got an explanation? I'm wondering if this is a nice marketing piece, if I'm missing something, or something else. I'm probably missing something, but...

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Keep in mind that everything in Spain is much less expensive compared to the US. Especially in a place like Toledo, which has 20% unemployment. They are a family business, with just one guy working in the "factory", so probably minimal employee overhead. Material and tooling costs for making a sword are pretty cheap anyway, even in the US.

Toledo used to be famous for its sword makers, but now all the other shops just import cheap knock-offs from China. So that's why he is called the last master sword-maker.

Unfortunately, the pay in Spain is generally pretty low. If I'm not mistaken, the minimum wage is about 7.6 euros per hour. It's actually ~6.50 euros an hour, which is 1050/month, but they get paid 14 times per year (there's two "bonus" pay cheques per year). So if you are full time year around employee, minimum is 7.6 while a more casual worker could be 6.50. Getting 15-30 euro per hour is more than double minimum wage at the low end, and nearly four times the minimum at the high end, so it seems somewhat plausible. A senior software engineer would only be making about that much here (40-50k euros).

Even junior grade engineering positions to be around the same.

To get something close to 2000 euro, either get lucky at a company that actually values employees instead of calling them collaborators, or having a couple of years experience.

Just adding that the bonus payment is not always 14. some companies default to this (or 13) for what feels like extra cash for xmas, but most companies nowadays just pay 12 times.

If you are in one of the 14 payments one you can ask for 12 and, if I remember correctly when I did, they have to comply.

Ah, for some reason I thought the 14 pays was for everyone.

I actually think the take-home pay would be below minimum wage here. 15-30 isn't take-home. In most companies, you'd be down to 7.5-15 after basic overhead (taxes, insurance, etc.). Add material costs, time to spend running web site, doing interviews, rounding up clients, billing, vendor management, etc. and it's hard to see how this makes ends meet.

Yeah, take home is always lower. The 6.5-7.5 minimum is before taxes and all that other stuff, take home would be even lower.

That does seem like low pay for a master of a craft. Maybe the claimed 10-20 hour process isn't really exclusive to one sword? If similar pieces are made in batches, maybe it takes 10-20 hours to go through the steps to take a batch of several swords from raw material to completion?

As an aside, my sister studied abroad in Spain and brought me back a sword from Toledo, which to a teenage boy was basically the most amazing gift possible. Good reminder to thank her again and/or send her something fun!

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