http://www.ebay.com/itm/25-1-ONE-Po...253?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4d08f88025 Is this even close to scrap? These are just bars, not even any designs...
Price charts from Metalprices.com shows currently around $10.40 a pound. Ebay seller is asking $46/pound. High price for the past three years was about $12.50 /pound.
Also: "worldwide events are causing shortages". Gee, I have never heard such scare tactics used to convince people to buy a metal, oh wait......
Brass, copper, steel, titanium, etc are all base metals. Never buy base metals for investing as they take up an insane amount of space, and require the price to go up quite a bit to make a decent return. Only stick with precious metals.
They're a little cheaper on provident, but not by much. http://www.providentmetals.com/bullion/art-bars-rounds/titanium-bullion-bars.html
I simply buy both physical and stocks dealing with PM, and buy stocks of base metal companies. It still leads to my SDB being way too heavy. I sure as heck don't want to be having to stack bars of tantalum and other things in there as well.
Titanium is not expensive so much from demand is the fact that it is difficult to work. Back in the late 50s and early 1960s the only source for titanium was in the USSR. Titanium was needed by Lockheed for parts of the SR-71 Blackbird, and through various channels the US government purchased the necessary titanium from the Soviets for "research purposes" and of course didn't tell them what they were really using it for. A few years later that same titanium went back over the USSR at 20.000 metres above them - and just out of missile range! The USSR could bring down a U-2, but they never got close to "Habu". And all these 40+ years later I am still proud of that amazing accomplishment - the SR-71 is still the fastest and highest bird ever built - using 1950's technology and designed by the great Kelly Johnson. Sure it set published records, but only a few in the know really know what it was truly capable of. Spasiba dlya vce tovarischii! As a military industrial complex brat with a family member high up in the programme I got the unique opportunity to sit in the cockpit when I was an anklebiter. Still love the bird that put the beans on our dinner table.
Not that I would even consider buying those, at least they have a design on them. The eBay ones are strictly bullion with no design, and is still being sold for a higher price!
When did I tell you when it was introduced? I didn't share that. The project was started in the late 1950s and went on through the early 1960s - the plane went through a couple of iterations before it was "public". And it changed from RS-71 to SR-71.
