Okay, Here's the story behind this post. Me and my brother started collecting scrap metals as young kids with our grandma, and I have always searched for something that was made out of pure, solid chromium, but all I ever found was chrome-plated steel car parts, chrome-plated copper and chrome-plated brass plumbing pipes and chrome-plated zinc parts on faucets. So, in this never-ending quest to find a piece of pure chromium, I must ask, Can you buy chromium bullion anywhere? Because I have always heard that chrome was an expensive metal, or at least, not very cheap. I have thought about asking a chrome-plating dealer if they would sell me a nice descent size block of chrome, for a fairly reasonable price. I have also thought that I would like to get a solid chrome ring made, even though I have a fobia of rings getting stick on my fingers, and therefore, do not like wearing them. One thing that I have, that I was wondering was pure chrome, is this knife I got that says "CASE XX CHROMIUM" with numbers "23-1" above the spelling on it, but the knife is all full of rust, and I don't believe chrome rusts, because, why would they chrome-plate steel car parts with it then? Oh, and is pure chromium magnetic? I once chipped some chome-plating off a piece of a bent kitchen faucet base, and tried picking it up with a magnet and it stuck, but I also know that chrome-plated things sometimes get nickel-plated first, and I believe nickel is magnetic. Not sure about chromium though.
Google is your friend! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium http://www.google.com/search?q=chromium&aq=f&oq=chromium&sugexp=chrome,mod=12&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#hl=en&sugexp=les%3B&gs_nf=1&gs_mss=chromium%20sale&pq=chromium&cp=14&gs_id=o&xhr=t&q=chromium+sales&pf=p&safe=off&sclient=psy-ab&oq=chromium+sales&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=708bd950daecd80b&biw=1366&bih=681
I have searched eBay for chromium bullion before and never found any. I like to collect at least a little bit of every kind of metal possible.
I don't think you'll have much luck getting chromium made into a ring. It's quite hard and brittle. You might have to mill out a solid disk of it. I'm also not sure how your skin would react to it. If you just want a sample, search eBay for "chromium element" or "chromium sample" -- there's one seller who's been listing chunks of it. They've been going for $10-$20.
You may perhaps want to take a look at older Italian 50 & 100 Lira coins, they were made out of chrome steel/stainless steel/acmonital and contain up to 19% chromium.
Some Canadian 5 cents coins from the 1940s and 1950s were struck on chrome plated steel. I found a 1954 in a roll search yesterday.
Very good source of chrome is low carbon high grade ferrochrome alloy. http://www.metal-pages.com/metalprices/ferrochrome/
Maybe if Half Dollar and Dollar coins were made of chromium, they'd circulate more and vendors would change over their machines to accept them.
I don't think chrome is magnetic. Iron, Nickel, and Cobalt are but not chromium. Also most most metals that can be made into bullion are ones that can be made into jewelry and coins, and also be used to back currency but I don't think you can do much of that with chromium. Also it's kind of toxic and I believe someone above said it could react with your skin.
Chrome based jewelry are normally made of cobalt-chrome alloy and is very nice and do not react with skin like in the case of nickel.
A little bit chromium out of curiosity is okay, for serious physical investment I don't see it to be suited very well (the same critical points that apply to copper have validity here too). Does anyone know the spread between buying and selling? -to know it might be enlightening!
These people will sell you pure chromium if you fancy it. http://www.element-collection.com/html/samples.html
