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Tin bullion specifically? Worthwile you think?

How does one obtain tin in quantity (other than buying it from a base metals dealer)?

I've wondered the SAME THING Ni. Response should be interesting! A search on Feebay results in ALL KINDS of "Bullion" for that matter. You can get titanium, lead (plan on getting some of that soon... but not for bullion! .) You can get brass, bronze, ANY kind of metal you can think of in bullion form now (and by bullion I mean a "minted" souped up marked item with the intent of using as a bartering or fiat alternative.)

I certainly wouldn't get much of it for anything over spot! NO TELLING what you are really getting either. I kinda doubt that the market for other metals outside of the big 4 discussed on this site is sizeable at this point so it may be difficult to resale those items. I mean... yeah... industrial use wise... sure. But "bullion" or bartering... I dunno. If you're paying spot or less than spot for it... then I'd say minus the risk for counterfeit items, you're probably ok to buy whatever and should be able to get the money back out of it from a scrap yard pretty easy (worst case). But it's like those copper bars going on ebay right now. That just seems kinda nutty to me. There selling for WAY over spot price of copper and I kinda doubt there flying off the shelf like pennies are flying out of circulation.

Certainly there are tin hoarders out there... I keep my cans so I guess I kinda hoard tin! But once I have a shopping bag full I give them to a buddy of mine who sells them. I have seen some pretty massive tin can hoards in my time and know plenty of folks that hoard cans! I saw a guy in Indiana once who probably had a semi load in his back yard! I know some folks down the street from me who have several 5 gal buckets of the pop caps to tin cans only. But your referring to the "bullion" type tin.

yea i was thinking tin in bar form for investment purposes....

and from searching the net, finding it at or close to spot is impossible.

just another "cool" thing to have like overpriced Cu bars?

Other kinds of bullion are cool if you collect elements but Tin as a bullion investment? No way. It is just too bulky to hold any real value.

Have you checked with natbs88? I received a nice 1 gram tin bar for Christmas from him. Not sure if he stocks larger sizes or not, I haven't checked into it.

Tin is up over 80% since January.

Thailand made small 90% SN coins. I come across them now and again, not sure you can get them inb quantity though.

yup, tin is up alot, so it sparked my interest.

copper cave has tin bullion bars but the spot tin price would have to explode in order to realize a profit?

jade dragon....point taken.

but boy do they look good! so shiny, kinda like silver.

Pennybug wrote:I've wondered the SAME THING Ni. Response should be interesting! A search on Feebay results in ALL KINDS of "Bullion" for that matter. You can get titanium, lead (plan on getting some of that soon... but not for bullion! .) You can get brass, bronze, ANY kind of metal you can think of in bullion form now (and by bullion I mean a "minted" souped up marked item with the intent of using as a bartering or fiat alternative.)

Brass and bronze are alloys, not pure metals. There is really no such thing as "999 Brass" or "999 Bronze," which is why I don't carry those on my website.

Pennybug wrote:But it's like those copper bars going on ebay right now. That just seems kinda nutty to me. There selling for WAY over spot price of copper and I kinda doubt there flying off the shelf like pennies are flying out of circulation.

You might be surprised just how fast they are flying off the shelves. $20.95 for a kilo bar of copper is only about $0.34 per troy ounce over spot. Most people would consider that a great deal for new silver bars, why not for new copper bars? The prices appear to be "way" over spot simply because the spot price is lower than the metals most people are used to buying.

Pennybug wrote:Certainly there are tin hoarders out there... I keep my cans so I guess I kinda hoard tin! But once I have a shopping bag full I give them to a buddy of mine who sells them. I have seen some pretty massive tin can hoards in my time and know plenty of folks that hoard cans! I saw a guy in Indiana once who probably had a semi load in his back yard! I know some folks down the street from me who have several 5 gal buckets of the pop caps to tin cans only. But your referring to the "bullion" type tin.

"Tin" cans aren't tin at all, they are steel. They haven't been made of tin in decades, but the name stuck. The actual element tin is a much softer metal, with a spot price of about $14.20 a pound right now.

999Ni wrote:yup, tin is up alot, so it sparked my interest.

copper cave has tin bullion bars but the spot tin price would have to explode in order to realize a profit?

If you intend to sell it for the spot price, that would be true. But why sell it for spot price when the market price is much higher? The price above spot may come down a little bit as bars are produced in larger quantities, but energy and manufacturing costs are going to continue to climb, so this sort of newly-produced bullion will always have a premium over spot. Nobody is going to invest in equipment and spend time and money producing bars just to turn around and sell them for the same price they paid for the raw material.

JadeDragon wrote:Other kinds of bullion are cool if you collect elements but Tin as a bullion investment? No way. It is just too bulky to hold any real value.

The spot price of tin is $14.20 a pound. The spot price of copper is $4.50 a pound. Again, don't get tin mixed up with steel

I hoard tin and its quite easy to get.

For those who hunt brass, copper, etc at garage sales, thrift shops, goodwills, etc might come across pewter. Pewter is an alloy of tin and antimony (another good metal).

Pewter is typically 85-99% tin and is extremely soft. I have found alot of pewter awards, plates and mugs/steins. I sell to a local realcenter and he casts them into bricks and backs the purities as stated.

Not as easy or cheap to find as say brass, but its still out there. Solder is also 50% tin and 50% lead if found cheap.

Well thanks Nate I just learned Tin is more valueable than copper (by 3X) Now where to find tin coins...

Nate... Love the responses! I always love friendly respectable discussion/debate with fellow realcenters! I take no offense and mean no offense ... that said...

#1 I'm aware that brass and bronze are alloys. Not sure why you pointed that out to me? I'm interested in why you don't sell them on your site? Do you feel that because they are alloys that they are less valuable than pure elements? Just curious... after all... I'm fairly new to dealing in PM's or base metals. The fact that they are not elements doesn't change the fact that they are traded as bullion bars on feebay (correct or incorrectly done so).

#2 If copper kilo bars are flying off the shelves... then as you pointed out with tin... SELL THEM FOR WHAT THE MARKET SUPPORTS! I totally agree with you there! You pointed out that selling these bars at $.34 per troy oz over spot is a good deal. Yes... I'd pay $.34 over spot for .999 silver all day long. However... for copper... $.34 per troy oz markup would equate to 209% over spot (at least based on the calculations of selling bars at $20.95 when copper spot is $4.53). That would be equivalent to selling a solid 1 oz silver bar with no numismatic value for $63 dollars. I kinda doubt many people would see that as a good deal! (although I'll bet you could still sell it to the feebay sharks). Not sure why folks are paying over 2x spot for those copper bars... but hey... I've been wrong about investments in the past! I'm not saying they're a bad investment... I can CERTAINLY name a LOT of WORSE ways to spend your money... but I can also name some better ones too IMHO.

#3 I wasn't aware that tin cans have very little tin in them! Learn something new every day! I know LOTS of folks who collect just the pull tabs from the cans. You suppose that those are pure tin or what? I've often wondered why save just that part of the can...

Pennybug wrote:Nate... Love the responses! I always love friendly respectable discussion/debate with fellow realcenters! I take no offense and mean no offense ... that said...

Me too

Pennybug wrote:#1 I'm aware that brass and bronze are alloys. Not sure why you pointed that out to me? I'm interested in why you don't sell them on your site? Do you feel that because they are alloys that they are less valuable than pure elements? Just curious... after all... I'm fairly new to dealing in PM's or base metals. The fact that they are not elements doesn't change the fact that they are traded as bullion bars on feebay (correct or incorrectly done so).

I was trying to point out why I don't carry them. The term "999 Brass," for instance, is just silly. There is no such thing as "999 Brass" because the metal is not 99.9% anything, it's an alloy, and "999 Brass" doesn't do anything to tell you the percentages of the different metals it contains. If people really want brass bars, they should be marked "750 Copper 250 Zinc," but of course that is not an attractive thing to market. The percentage of copper in a brass alloy can range from as much as 95% to less than 60%, and there are many brasses that also contain tin, zinc, or aluminum. If you have a bar marked "999 Brass," you really have no idea what the actual metallic content is, other than "some copper and some zinc, and maybe something else too."

Pennybug wrote:#2 If copper kilo bars are flying off the shelves... then as you pointed out with tin... SELL THEM FOR WHAT THE MARKET SUPPORTS! I totally agree with you there! You pointed out that selling these bars at $.34 per troy oz over spot is a good deal. Yes... I'd pay $.34 over spot for .999 silver all day long. However... for copper... $.34 per troy oz markup would equate to 209% over spot (at least based on the calculations of selling bars at $20.95 when copper spot is $4.53). That would be equivalent to selling a solid 1 oz silver bar with no numismatic value for $63 dollars. I kinda doubt many people would see that as a good deal! (although I'll bet you could still sell it to the feebay sharks). Not sure why folks are paying over 2x spot for those copper bars... but hey... I've been wrong about investments in the past! I'm not saying they're a bad investment... I can CERTAINLY name a LOT of WORSE ways to spend your money... but I can also name some better ones too IMHO.

As a percentage of spot, the "premium" will always be more for copper than it is for silver, simply because silver is currently selling for 6.5 times the price of copper. But that doesn't make the copper any cheaper to process, handle, mint, transport, etc. There are a lot of fixed costs involved in producing bullion regardless of what metal you are working with (and there are some higher variable costs with copper because it melts at a higher temperature and is more reactive to oxygen when molten, requiring more energy to melt and special care when casting). If $0.34 per troy oz over spot is too much, then what would be acceptable?

Also, saying the $0.34 per troy ounce over spot is a "markup" in inaccurate. Markup is what a seller adds over their cost, so that would imply that the cost of the finished product is exactly spot, which is simply not the case. The producer more than likely paid over spot just for the raw material, and then has all of the expenses associated with turning that raw material into a finished product. The total cost of the product is already well over spot, so the seller's markup isn't anywhere close to $0.34 per troy ounce. "The bar is priced $0.34 over spot" may be an accurate statement, but "the markup is $0.34" is false.

Pennybug wrote:#3 I wasn't aware that tin cans have very little tin in them! Learn something new every day! I know LOTS of folks who collect just the pull tabs from the cans. You suppose that those are pure tin or what? I've often wondered why save just that part of the can...

Ah, you mean beverage cans. I was referring to food cans, which are steel but often incorrectly referred to as tin. Beverage cans are neither steel nor tin, but aluminum.

This is the only reason I have been drinking Beer......to grow my tin hoard.

They are aluminum?.......That spot is much lower than tin........guess I will have to step up my drinking to increase my hoard's value.

Steel ^


Aluminum ^

Rodebaugh wrote:This is the only reason I have been drinking Beer......to grow my tin hoard.

They are aluminum?.......That spot is much lower than tin........guess I will have to step up my drinking to increase my hoard's value.

If you step up your drinking you won't care what the value of your hoard is.

Just stay classy about Tin hoarding, or Al hoarding

Why are people willing to pay a $100 plus fabrication/marketing/dealer premium over spot on a gold coin and than expect that copper bars can be created and sold for spot?

tin foil rat says:

"I get my bars from copper cave"

was there a time when aluminum foil........was tin?

0CD

zerocd wrote:tin foil rat says:

"I get my bars from copper cave"

was there a time when aluminum foil........was tin?

0CD

Yes, but after WWII aluminum became much cheaper.

JadeDragon wrote:Why are people willing to pay a $100 plus fabrication/marketing/dealer premium over spot on a gold coin and than expect that copper bars can be created and sold for spot?

Well, [at the wholesale level, in bulk] copper bars are traded/exchanged for spot... That's what the spot price is based on, and why salvage prices are lower than spot. "Retail" price will be higher, of course.

Further to this, gold coins (looking at AGE) are spot plus currency cost ($50 for the one ouncers) plus a mint seignorage fee to cover their cost and allow a profit, which then gets added markup as it goes further down the distribution chain. But in the end if you pay more than spot plus 4-6% (depending on quantity) for gold, shipping included, you're paying too much.

^
TIN

Wait , are you guys saying Tin or Ten?