My wife’s obsession with the English TV show, Poldark sparked an interest in the metal tin for me. However, in the show, they mine copper in Cornwall. Ha. Wrong. It was tin they mined in Cornwall. But, I guess nobody knows what tin is (or doesn’t care) so, they changed it to the more exciting copper mining.

I kept running across the tin alloy, pewter, in my search for sterling silver. Pewter is usually around 95% tin and a bit of copper to harden it. Those two metals make up the alloy. It looks similar enough to silver and is made into the same bowls, trays, mugs, etc. that it’s worth a quick inspection. After seeing an item and discovering it was pewter and feeling cheated, I’d put it back on the shelf. Not anymore.

I did a quick search for tin prices on the internet and found pure tin selling for ten dollars a pound. Not bad. Silver sells for two hundred and fifty dollars a pound but, the shelves at the junk stores aren’t overflowing with silver. I figured if I can purchase tin (pewter) items from the second hand stores for one to two dollars a pound, I could make some money off of it.

I found a company out in Pennsylvania that buys tin products. And, they’ll send a truck out to pick it up. No need to drive out there to drop it off. They pay five dollars a pound too. Not bad again. They have to make a buck too. The hitch is, to schedule a pick-up, they’ll need a minimum of five hundred pounds. Wow. I’ve got some collecting to do.

For the last couple of months. I’ve been buying all the pewter I can find under two dollars a pound. I’m up to about forty pounds now. Only four hundred and sixty pounds to go. With luck, I’ll have the minimum pick-up amount before this buyer out in Pennsylvania retires and closes up shop.

Hopefully, the price of tin won’t crash between now and then. And, hopefully, my wife won’t divorce me because I have a quarter ton of tin in the basement. Wish me luck.