Photo courtesy United States Forest Service Region, Eastern Region/Flickr

Koochiching County wood auctions are not seeing much change in prices.

An auction earlier this month resulted in sales of just under $1.2 million dollars.

A combined 31,556 cords sold, generating just over one million dollars.

Land Commissioner Nathan Heibel says prices have not changed much in the last eighteen months.

“Prices continue to kind of hold fairly steady from what we’ve seen the last year and a half or so, the last 18 months or so. Softwood prices, surprisingly, are still up there,” says Heibel.

Heibel is uncertain how long they will see the high prices, given the recent drop in lumber prices.

One of the bright spots is the sale of what the county calls decorative spruce tips.

“It’s small young black spruce that’s a couple of feet high, and actually, we sell them. They go to the decorative market in the fall of the year for around the holidays. That market has kind of been growing and growing. We saw record prices for those at our last auction.”

The May auction saw nearly 140,000 fetch $101,981.70.