Imagine my surprise when I saw this on Ebay, and further surprise I won it with a rather low bid, and there were only two other bidders. I got it for $11 and change and with shipping, it was under $20.
Musk is now illegal because the collection of the pods required the killing of the musk deer. These small lovely animals were slaughtered by the thousands for the perfumery and Chinese medicine trade. Nowadays there are farms for the collection of the pods for Chinese medicine and the pods are harvested by laparoscopic surgery, and the deers are of course, not killed, and survive to produce more pods.
The scent of musk was added to perfumes lavishly for centuries, but wiht the CITES agreement, disappeared from commercial perfumes in the 1970's. Some musk is making its way into the market from the Chinese. I have small samples of some recent Tonquin musk and I can compare it to the Kashmiri musk that someone collected about 20 years ago. They are different in scent, quite different.

Perhaps sometime in the near future the humane harvest of the pods by the Chinese can provide a small amount of this prized and fragrant material be made available.
wow amazing find
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