I found out why the Neodymium speakers I ordered almost doubled in price a few days after I bought them. Apparently China is the only supplier of neodymium thanks to EPA regulations and other crap that forced the shutdown of our mining operations here in the US because it just wasn't feasible for them to operate in that type of an environment anymore. That plus the fact that China is limiting exports of it because of their own internal usage of the material, plus a hefty tax they just levied on it per ton, has created a situation where the price of neodymium has gone way up all of a sudden. China took over and closed our only neodymium processing facility here in the US as part of a trade deal a while back as well, so we don't even have a currently open processing facility here in the US.
There's a mining operation in California that will be starting back up within the next year or two, so hopefully we'll start producing our own again and get out from under the thumb of the Chinese suppliers. The bad part about all this is that neodymium is used in everything from cell phones to military equipment and we're pretty dependent on it technologically. We should be producing our own anyway, so hopefully this mining operation in California will take off and get us back on track, and maybe a few other operations will follow.
The sad part is that speaker manufacturers have had to up the prices about 80% on the speakers, and one company that builds speaker cabs has discontinued building cabs with neodymium speakers, at least for now.
Oh well, at least Musician's friend is honoring the price I bought them for on the three backordered ones. I should be getting those by mid May.