We've heard a lot lately about how gold, in both the yellow and black flavors, has become considerably more valuable than it used to be.
Not everyone, though, realizes that there are more hues around us. Those alchemists of medeval times really were barking up the wrong tree, because there wasn't any need for them to knock themselves out trying to synthesize good old elemental Au. They just needed to patiently wait until the economy went south a bit and then took a good look around them.
They sure wouldn't have to wait a thousand years, either. In centuries past, certain things were always quite valuable.
Glass. Generally transparent, but sometimes you can see red and blue shades in it if you look at it just right. Until the 1800's, it was very expensive and difficult to make. A house that had more than one or two windows in it was the home of a wealthy family. Before glass, mirrors were practically non-existant. Those few that were around typically were polished metal, meticulously shined with a slurry of fine river sand and whatever else could be pressed into service as an abrasive. It took considerable time and effort to make one, and often they weren't very good. Tarnish, rust, or other corrosion would destroy them in short order if they weren't maintained diligently. If one was to ruin one, it was a real shame back then. Ever wonder where the seven years of bad luck for breaking a mirror is rumored to come from? I doubt that it really took a craftsman seven years to make one, but I'm sure it probably felt like it. It might have taken seven years to find someone wealthy enough to commission the making of one, though. Mirrors were typically a possession of nobility. Anyone else lived live with no real idea of what they looked at unless they found some very still water somewhere.
A few years back, the site of, I believe, the Battle of Hastings, or some other long ago conflict in old England or Scotland, was excavated. Some remains were located, but no weapons. This was a disappointment to the enthusiastic arceaologists, but not a total surprise. Metals were very precious back then. It took a lot of work to gather ores, then to build a fire hot enough and durable enough to reduce the ores into iron, copper, or tin. Copper and tin, of course, combine to make bronze. Copper is characteristically red. Steel is refined iron with most of the naturally occuring carbon burnt out of it, allowing it to be malleable so it could be hammered into shape. Steel is a soft gray, but it sure changes colors as you heat it! Of the metals available back then, lead was likely the easiest to find and work with. Shiny at first, but very dark gray later on, and white as it oxidizes. Too bad it was too heavy and soft to be overly useful in a great many cases! Tin is also easy to work with because it's very soft. It's melting temperature is fairly low. It's a bit on the rare side, though, which is why we don't see much made with tin anymore; we only enounter it as a very thin coating over other metals or as part of an alloy such as bronze or with lead or antimony in solder. The bodies of the slain warriors had hardly assumed ambient temperature before their metal weapons were collected and redistributed or diverted to local blacksmiths for some, uh, 'reworking'.
I bought a motorcycle battery a few days ago. I'm used to a $5 core charge deposit, refundable when the old battery, consisting mainly of lead plates and electrolyte contained in a plastic box, is brought in for recycling. I was modestly surprised when the core charge came to $9 this time! They really want that lead back, don't they?
I do a fair amount of shooting. Not so much actual discharging of a firearm, but more reading, study, and discussion of the people, science, history, and heritage of firearms. I load almost all of my own ammunition, and when I start to consume it, it's just about exclusively on an experimental basis. I often will take five or ten carefully assembled cartridges with me, designed to test one particular variable as I evaluate the ballistic characteristics of my creation. I take notes, recover the fired bullets from a sand trap behind my test target, and go back home with what I've learned. Not only do I figure out how I'll improve what I've developed, but I melt down my recovered bullets and recast them. In the past few years, lead has roughly tripled. If I bought a box of five hundred cast bullets in 2003, I'd have paid something like $25. Now that same box costs more like $50, and that's optimistic. Quite often, it'll be more. The copper jacketed variety is even worse. I recover other people's bullets when I can, and often they're copper jacketed. No biggie - copper is lighter than lead. Drop a jacketed bullet into a pot of molten lead, and the copper shell will float to the top after a few moments as the lead inside liquifies. The empty jacket can then be carefully extracted with a pair of pliers and set in a separate bin for recycling later. They sure won't be thrown out!
Copper tends to disappear. 'Urban miners' are back with a vengeance, stripping electrical wiring and plumbing pipe from wherever they can make off with it. Try a plumbing project these days. If you do, I expect you'll be a very enthusiastic convert to Polyvynil Chloride (PVC) plastic hardware once you see what they're getting for copper pipe now!
Catalytic converters are still disappearing right and left in some places, with crooks forcefully removing them from beneath vehicles so they can sell them to recyclers who recover the platinum and rhodium hiding inside. This isn't so much a problem for those of us who drive cars. Those of us who tool around in pickups and SUV's are vulnerable, though, since these vehicles have a higher ground clearance and crawling beneath one with a saw in hand isn't such an obstacle.
Gasoline has been siphoned or even tapped from gas tanks for a long time, but an item in the Des Moines Register yesterday was an eye opener. Used cooking oil from restaraunts is vanishing almost as soon as it's put out. Companies that buy it for recycling are hurting as a result. Where does this cooking oil go? Those few of us who have diesel cars converted to run effectively on 'bio-diesels' have a use for it!
Money may not grow on trees, but sometimes it can seem remarkably close. The sad part is that sometimes a tree would be a lot more difficult for someone to run off with, unlike other now valuable commodities which tend to not stay put if you leave them unattended.
Keep your eyes open,
the TiGor
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