It wasn’t exactly a fire sale. Ming’s jewelry was still priced at the level you’d expect for those beautiful pieces. But some dealers were offering deep discounts for other vintage ivory pieces at the Hawaii All-Collectors Show at the Blaisdell Center on Sunday.

They have to sell their inventory while they can.

Last month Gov. David Ige signed into law Act 125, which bans the sale or barter of any item, be it a brooch or button, piano or pistol, that is made of ivory or any part of an animal that is considered an endangered or threatened species. The law will take effect June 30, 2017.

“After that I’m going to take what I have left, put it in a frame and just hang it on my wall,” one dealer said.

In May, The New York Times ran an article, “How the Elephant Became the Newest Celebrity Cause,” which compared elephant activism to cries of “save the rainforest” in the ’90s. Leonardo DiCaprio, Susan Sarandon and Lupita Nyong’o are among the A-list actors who have campaigned on social media for ivory bans, often posting pictures of themselves with elephants.

Which makes it seem somehow superficial.

The slaughter, however, is real. It is estimated that 33,000 elephants are killed every year for their tusks. The market for ivory is particularly high in parts of Asia.

But what does that have to do with a 75-year-old pair of earrings shaped like plumerias that remind you of Auntie Nani?

The Hawaii ban does include a few exemptions. An item with documentation to prove it’s at least 100 years old can be sold. If the piece is composed of less than 20 percent animal product, it is allowed; this is meant to exclude things like antique guns with ivory inlays from the sales ban. Items used for Native Hawaiian cultural practices and educational or scientific purposes are also permitted.

But collectors of Ming’s ivory pieces are out of luck.

“The thing that really bothers me is that it’s a part of Hawaii’s history that’s being blacklisted,” said Brenda Reichel, a jeweler and appraiser. She remembers when Ming’s went out of business in October 1999. “There were lines out the store three and four hours long. There were catfights in the store, women trying to get their hands on Ming’s pieces.”

Ming’s, founded in 1940, catered to women who worked downtown — ladies who would come in and put down $5 a week to buy a pair of earrings they admired. Visitors got off the boats at Aloha Tower and came across the street to Ming’s store, where they found jewelry inspired by Hawaii’s flora. Ming’s was the “Tiffany’s of the Pacific.” Vintage pieces now sell for about $175 for a pair of simple flower-shaped earrings to thousands of dollars for a set of matching earrings, necklace, bracelet and brooch. All of Ming’s ivory was pre-ban ivory, but Hawaii’s new law makes people’s personal vintage collections suddenly illegal to sell and essentially worthless.

Jeweler Mark Carson calls it feel-good legislation. Perhaps, with the big International Conservation Conference coming to Honolulu this September, legislators wanted to look good or at least not look bad. “But they’re tapping the wrong end of the problem. This doesn’t stop the demand in China or the killing in Africa,” he said.

“They should have provided an exemption for ivory that can be reasonably determined by a competent authority to be pre-ban,” Reichel said.

They should have exempted Ming’s.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.