old Christmas tree tinsel

[xd45forever]

M better half god bless her heart found a large box of old old old!! Christmas tinsel that is tin/lead anyone know if its useable? i know it takes a lot to make a lb but free is free! Lol

[MBTcustom]

Wow. That's a first for me. I remember the tinsel we had when I was a kid, but it was plastic of some sort.

[fecmech]

I always thought it was aluminum but if it melts at low temp then tin it is. I used to lay it across my Lionel model train tracks to make sparks.

[xd45forever]

Yup its tin! THrew a strand in my pot while casting this mornin n it just melted in immediately! LOve it!lol

[DougGuy]

DON"T melt that stuff!! Have you looked on fleabay and see how much it fetches??? (Sitting down)..

[xd45forever]

Oh !oh!!!!! MY bad!! Guess a guy should look before melting!!! OOops!

[DougGuy]

One of my favorite scenes in "It's A Wonderful Life" is when George is in their living room and the tree is decorated with lead tinsel, you can see how bad it droops the limbs down and then when his little girl globs a lump of it on his head, you can visibly see how the weight of it pushes his hair down.

[borg]

LOL, We used to roll it up into little balls and use it for slingshot ammo.

[xd45forever]

She found a bunch more! SHe used to own a thrift store n had it packed away in the reminants of it! I told her since she was willing to let me have it any ebay profit from it should go to future lead/tin purchases.................. not shure if shes going for it!! LOl

[Alan in Vermont]

Wow. That's a first for me. I remember the tinsel we had when I was a kid, but it was plastic of some sort.

That's'cuz you ain't old enough. :)

The lead stuff was so terribly fragile, it was really neat when the aluminized plastic stuff hit the market.

[dave roelle]

You could THROW the old stuff to the top of the Christmas tree :)

[dg31872]

I remember that my mother would put the lead tinsel on the tree and after Christmas, remove the tinsel to reuse the next year.
Times were tough.

[flyer1]

I remember that my mother would put the lead tinsel on the tree and after Christmas, remove the tinsel to reuse the next year.
Times were tough.

Didn't every one do that? Picking it off the tree each year was us kids job.

[DougGuy]

I hunted down some of the early 60s Mylar tinsel, we save ours every year too, take it back off. The Mylar has a movement about it that more recent tinsel doesn't have. I like how it shimmers and moves if there is the slightest air movement in the room. I grew up with it and once you get "enough" of it on the tree, it takes on a certain character that only the real deal Mylar stuff does. Love Christmas and everything about it.

Don't guess it would do much for a boolit caster but it works wonders for a vintage look for a tree. We also like wartime and post war European ornaments, hand painted mercury glass from Poland and Czechoslovakia are REALLY cool..

[bangerjim]

You have to go back to the 40's to early 60's. I had boxes of the TIN stuff. Loved hooking up to my Lionel train transformer and making it POP!

It also did that when it got down in the bulb sockets!!!!!!!

Plastic came about because of the "greenies" and rug rats eating lead paint.

Metal tinsel hung really nice and was reusable from year to year.

Gone are the fun daze!

B4 melting it down (you will not get much metal there)......if it is still in the original boxes, Christmas collectors will pay VERY good money for it! The boxes are critical. Check it out B4 destroying it for a few silly boolits.

bangerjim

[starnbar]

We used it in the slingshots it made darn good squirrel remover.

[JWFilips]

Ah! I remember my young days at Christmas laying the tin/lead tinsel on the tracks of the old Lionel ...My Dad would yell! But he knew I was the youngest of a line of sons that had experimented with "sparking the tracks" since he bought that old engine home in the 40's.
I wouldn't melt it....... It will fetch a bunch on the "BAY" especially if you have the package!

[littlejack]

I remember decorating the tree with that stuff when I was a kid. After a while of laying the strands on the branches, my bro and I would get tired and start throwing the stuff at the tree. Thats all it took. Mom fired us and put all of the tinsel on by her self.
That tinsel being rolled up for slingshot ammo must have been some of the first frangible projectiles?

[rr2241tx]

Our Christmas trees were always mountain juniper. My grandfather would keep a few trimmed up for future Christmases. About the time the tree began to dry up all the ticks would decide it was time to find a new place to live. Picking the tinsel off the tree gave them a perfect opportunity to relocate. I also remember you had to be careful about how long you ran the lights because the bulbs got so hot they could start the tree on fire. Christmas was about faith and family, both seemingly extinct concepts these days.

[Mitch]

I must not be old enough to remember the lead stuff but we did pick off the suff we had and use it over every year must have been the mylar stuff.