Price of lead to drop

[bsibjr]

I just came across tis article on another forum, thought some of you would like to read it.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/05/bloomberg/bxcom.php

[Leftoverdj]

Good news for the manufacturers. Not sure it is good news for us. As the story notes, some of the increased supply is coming from increased recycling. Increased recycling means increased pressure on the scrap supply and prices. A decrease in the wholesale price of refined lead does not necessarily translate to a decrease in scrap prices, especially with more refiners coming on line.

[corvette8n]

Probably cause China isn't going to coat the toys with it anymore.
Now is we could only find a way to recover the stuff from the millions and millions of toys imported into the US last year.

[cohutt]

check the date, it is over 2 months old now.

in early august lead had pulled back to 1.30-1.40.


It hit 1.80 today.


oh well

[Typecaster]

My experience is that cost of raw materials goes up, so do prices. Cost of raw materials goes down, prices stay the same, or go up—now blamed on transportation costs.

Happened with silver and film back in the '90s, and steel a couple of years ago. Have you priced nails at your local Home Depot lately?

The laws of supply and demand seem only to benefit the suppliers.

[Bob Jones]

I was reading some Handloader's magazines from the late 60's last night and they were complaining that lead was $.35 per pound at that time. Given inflation that was a lot more expensive even than it is today.

I think to some extent we've all gotten spoiled by cheap shooting the last 10-15 years. I know I'll go out and shoot 300 rounds through my 1911's without thinking about it. 30-40 years ago ammo was expensive and I'd shoot a box or maybe two, carefully.

It seems to me that we're just getting back more to where we used to be in terms of cost. On the other hand, I'm a cheap SOB and after shooting yesterday cruised the backstop of the range and came home with about 80 pounds of lead in about 30 minutes of picking it up off the ground. After smelting that's about 30-40 pounds of lead, or 1000 new .41 caliber bullets for my new gun, not a bad return.

That's my own habit to keep up with costs, I try to always come back from the range with more lead than I left with. Also, just picked up a few cases of Wolf primers for $65 per 5,000 at the local gunshow, gotta watch the deals.

[fecmech]

Just for kicks I ran $.35 thru the calculators at eh.net and here is what I got using 1965 as the base year.

In 2006, $0.35 from 1965 is worth:
$2.24 using the Consumer Price Index
$1.81 using the GDP deflator
$0.00 using the value of consumer bundle
$2.42 using the unskilled wage
$4.16 using the nominal GDP per capita
$6.42 using the relative share of GDP

[cohutt]

Just for kicks I ran $.35 thru the calculators at eh.net and here is what I got using 1965 as the base year.

In 2006, $0.35 from 1965 is worth:
$2.24 using the Consumer Price Index
$1.81 using the GDP deflator
$0.00 using the value of consumer bundle
$2.42 using the unskilled wage
$4.16 using the nominal GDP per capita
$6.42 using the relative share of GDP


LOL.

I thought this some a while back and got anal about it. This is a copy of a post i made in a "price of lead thread" back in July:


spikes like this have occurred a few times and things eventually settle down again somewhat. Back to 20 cents? doubt it-

a while back I looked back at the history of lead, did some head scratching and then tried to put it all in some sort of perspective. -
here is very recent history from kitco for reference: http://www.kitcometals.com/charts/lead_historical_large.html#1year
other sources sources are usgs historical data and cpi data
read http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lead/
and review: http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lead/380798.pdf for some historical perspective
and memorize all data here: http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lead/stat/

look at this homemade table- yes, lead is expensive now, but historically not off the charts as it may appear vs a couple years ago. it was just pretty cheap during the early 2000s by historical standards when compared to the price of everything else................relative to everything else......... still $1.40 is tough, like $3.00 gas....

we are in the same area as just after WWII and in the 70s, per the inflation adjusted price in c3. thank you, china.....

c1 = year
c2 = price per lb in that years dollar
c3 = inflation adjusted price in dec 2006 dollars for US delivered lead, usually a few cents/lb more than lme spot prices as shown in kitco's commodity charts
Year $/lb 2006$/lb
1913 $0.044 $0.90
1914 $0.039 $0.79
1915 $0.047 $0.94
1916 $0.069 $1.28
1917 $0.088 $1.39
1918 $0.074 $0.99
1919 $0.058 $0.68
1920 $0.080 $0.81
1921 $0.045 $0.51
1922 $0.057 $0.68
1923 $0.073 $0.86
1924 $0.081 $0.95
1925 $0.090 $1.04
1926 $0.084 $0.96
1927 $0.068 $0.79
1928 $0.063 $0.74
1929 $0.068 $0.80
1930 $0.055 $0.66
1931 $0.042 $0.56
1932 $0.032 $0.47
1933 $0.039 $0.60
1934 $0.039 $0.59
1935 $0.041 $0.60
1936 $0.047 $0.68
1937 $0.060 $0.84
1938 $0.047 $0.67
1939 $0.051 $0.74
1940 $0.052 $0.75
1941 $0.058 $0.80
1942 $0.065 $0.80
1943 $0.065 $0.76
1944 $0.065 $0.74
1945 $0.065 $0.73
1946 $0.081 $0.84
1947 $0.147 $1.33
1948 $0.180 $1.51
1949 $0.154 $1.30
1950 $0.133 $1.11
1951 $0.175 $1.36
1952 $0.165 $1.26
1953 $0.135 $1.02
1954 $0.141 $1.06
1955 $0.151 $1.14
1956 $0.160 $1.19
1957 $0.147 $1.05
1958 $0.121 $0.84
1959 $0.122 $0.85
1960 $0.119 $0.81
1961 $0.109 $0.73
1962 $0.096 $0.64
1963 $0.111 $0.73
1964 $0.136 $0.88
1965 $0.160 $1.02
1966 $0.151 $0.94
1967 $0.140 $0.85
1968 $0.132 $0.76
1969 $0.149 $0.82
1970 $0.157 $0.82
1971 $0.139 $0.69
1972 $0.150 $0.72
1973 $0.163 $0.74
1974 $0.225 $0.92
1975 $0.215 $0.81
1976 $0.231 $0.82
1977 $0.307 $1.02
1978 $0.337 $1.04
1979 $0.526 $1.46
1980 $0.425 $1.04
1981 $0.365 $0.81
1982 $0.255 $0.53
1983 $0.217 $0.44
1984 $0.256 $0.50
1985 $0.191 $0.36
1986 $0.221 $0.41
1987 $0.359 $0.64
1988 $0.371 $0.63
1989 $0.394 $0.64
1990 $0.460 $0.71
1991 $0.335 $0.50
1992 $0.351 $0.50
1993 $0.317 $0.44
1994 $0.372 $0.51
1995 $0.423 $0.56
1996 $0.488 $0.63
1997 $0.465 $0.58
1998 $0.453 $0.56
1999 $0.437 $0.53
2000 $0.436 $0.51
2001 $0.436 $0.50
2002 $0.436 $0.49
2003 $0.438 $0.48
2004 $0.551 $0.59
2005 $0.610 $0.63
2006 $0.863 $0.86

[Bullshop]

In about the last 18 months I have made three purchases from a dealer in Fairbanks.
I had been paying .25 for several years then about a year and a half ago it went to .50.
About 6 months later it it was up to .70. When I went in a couple weeks ago it was .90
He was asking $1.60 but when I fell to the floor crying he adjusted down to .90. I have no idea what to expect next time. Each time I think it has peaked I am fooled. Each time I have been buying about 1500 to 2500 lbs. That is quite a bite out of my proffit.
I hate to have to do it but have to raise my prices another .25 per lb.. This seems to be a regular quarterly thing. Where will it end?
BIC/BS

[cohutt]

Where will it end?
BIC/BS


It ends when the 8 gazillion Chinese and Indians wanting to drive automobiles go back to bicycles

[Bad Ass Wallace]

It ends when the 8 gazillion Chinese and Indians wanting to drive automobiles go back to bicycles
How very true!

I find the cheapest lead is available from the scroungers who normally sell to the scrappers. Yesterday, my local bloke mentioned he had 800+lbs of new roof flashing that the dealer was offering to buy for $0.45/lb. I offered him 50c/lb for the whole lot so we struck a deal $400 cash.

Today I picked it up and there was 922lbs total for that price. Considering I only get 11 x 650gn bullets for my 50/90 per pound, that's still a lot of cheap shooting:Fire:

[John F.]

Wallace, how do you locate these scroungers? Any hints?

Thanks,
John

[catboat]

The board may want to keep this as a "sticky."

Lead price chart:
http://www.infomine.com/investment/historicalcharts/showcharts.asp?c=Lead

Other metals (copper, gold) are on the link too, just click around.

[Bad Water Bill]

Gas prices go up because WE have sent so many jobs there that I do not think anyone knows how much we owe china at this moment. With that much U S dollars in THEIR banks they can pay almost any amount for a bbl of oil. Since China is the largest EXPORTER in the world AND they just raised their EXPORT tax on lead it looks like they also set the world price on lead. Just maybe we should take a closer look at where items are made and purchase much more MADE IN AMERICA and much less made in china and maybe industry will bring back more jobs for our own families BWB

[Rick N Bama]

Just maybe we should take a closer look at where items are made and purchase much more MADE IN AMERICA and much less made in china and maybe industry will bring back more jobs for our own families BWB

I've been trying to do that very thing & find it all but impossible to do.

Rick

[38 Super Auto]

I think a big factor in semi-precious metal prices is the increased global demand spawned by the industrialization of 3rd world countries like China and India. This industrialization is also putting pressure on crude oil.

The beauty of capitalism is that as prices rise, additional producers will be motivated to begin mining/manufacturing. This increased supply will bring the price down (same demand + more supply = lower price). This works very well if the governement does not intervene with stupid policies. In the case of crude oil, American producers would like to explore and drill more on the Florida and California coasts as well as the frozen tundra in ANWR. The more we look for oil, the more oil we find.

Unfortunately, extremists prevent additional exploration and production/refining of oil in the US via litigation. This has been translated into state and federal laws severely limiting our ability to develop energy. If the US produced significantly more crude oil, the global oil price would drop, right?

As semi-precious metal prices rise, intelligent solutions will be developed because there is money to be made. That's economics.

Like it or not, we live in a global economy: without Japanese and Chinese competition, cars, consumer electronics, and just about everything else would be prohibitively expensive.

I like the idea of buying American as well, but every year that goes by, we manufacture fewer and fewer items. This helps consumers' buying power, but hurts the skilled and unskilled job markets.

I believe less government intervention is the key. :)