People buy Buddhist pendants/amulets for many reasons – good luck, good health, financial prosperity, protection, love, and many other reasons. Some people believe ardently in the power of Buddhist items and buy them to enjoy a better quality of life.
Twenty years ago when I arrived in Thailand, I was in the northeast. I had already met the girl who would later become my wife. We were living in Ubon Ratchathani. I remember seeing Buddhist pendants for sale for the first time. In the states, we have stores selling photos and jewelry of Jesus and the saints and other people in the Bible and mythology.
For me, it’s neither here nor there. No matter to me what other people believe. Since I had never seen Buddhist jewelry, I stopped in many of the amulet shops to see what they had. Some things were made with quality materials like white jade, green jade, black jade, petrified wood, solid copper, silver, gold, and other materials – even elephant tusk, which shocked me.
Today you can still find elephant tusk amulets and other things. Twenty years of enlightenment hasn’t made much difference for the fate of animals in this country.
Since I had never seen amulets like those in Thailand at these small shops, I wondered whether anyone in America would buy them. There were plenty of Buddhists in the states and some of them must want Buddha pendants on a necklace. I bought 5 amulets for around $150 and put them on eBay one at a time.
Each one sold within a week.
I thought, this is amazing… I wondered if we could do a small website selling Buddhist things we bought at the temples. I bought about 20 things and made a website to see what happened.
It was only about 3 months later when we had sold everything and it looked like this was a real business.
I learned that many people believed some amulets had special powers. Some believed they gave luck. Health. Financial prosperity. Peace of mind. Protection from crime. Many other beliefs about all kinds of things were wrapped up in the amulets of Thailand and other places like Sri Lanka, Burma, and other places.
I didn’t know how to feel about selling things like that, but eventually I just accepted that some people believe in nonsense and others don’t. I couldn’t qualify buyers by their beliefs. I just allowed anyone to buy the items at the website.
The website was hacked before COVID and then we let the domain name expire. To our horror, someone bought the old domain name immediately and somehow put our old pages up there as if the business was still going. It took some effort, but we were able to insist their hosting company take the website down.
This year we resurrected (pun intended) the website and renamed it – ThaiAmuletStore.com.
We sell Buddhist items there from the temples around our home and other provinces of Thailand.
We sell pendants of Buddha, Kwan Yin, Luang Pu Thuat, Pidta, Ganesh, and other Buddhist and Hindu figures. We have free shipping and we always include some free stuff to keep customers happy.
Do We Believe in the Power of Buddhist Amulets?
Hmm. No, not really. We do believe in the power of the human mind to fully convince someone of their power and so it is possible that amulets have a positive effect in their lives!
We have something like 2,500 pendants, necklaces, and bracelets to sell – in inventory here at the house, so we need to sell these!
After that we’ll sell the business to someone else. Or, if you are interested in buying it soon – with the inventory, just let us know. We’ll definitely consider it.
The new website is now listed in Google and we are getting some small traffic. We sold a necklace the other day and we think Google will love the website again soon and sales will be good.
If you want to purchase anything, let us know. We can give you a discount on most items so we can start to get rid of this inventory. We bought far too much! 🙂