scored some English pewter yesterday

[farmbif]

first time ive ever gotten anything stamped "ENGLISH PEWTER". 2 beer mugs found at a yard sale for $1 each, probably 1/2 pound or a bit more for both. supposedly English pewter is 92% tin. I scoured the huge yard sale hoping to find a dozen more but there were only 2

[CastingFool]

That's an excellent find!

[kevin c]

That’s 25# worth of sweetened alloy at a tin cost well below retail metal prices. These days $4 a pound for pewter is very respectable.

Good job!

Scouring yard sales and thrift shops out my way (Left Coast) requires a lot of time and patience that I no longer have. My most recent acquisitions are from a local auction house that will put up the contents of several estate sales together over a monthly three day sale. I can inspect the lots in advance, weigh items, calculate my maximum bid and submit it as an absentee bidder so I don’t tie up three days (the auction house notifies me if I win a lot).

The upside is an hugh amount of time saved and the fun of browsing through a lot of stuff in one place. The downsides are the auction house fees and the other stuff in the won lots that aren’t pewter, but that’s already factored into my bid, and if I don’t want what’s beside the pewter it gets dropped off at Goodwill on my way home.