Things that surprised fivemack

[fivemack]

Should I be more surprised that you can buy light-weight hiking mugs made out of titanium, or that there are two sellers on Amazon of mugs branded as 'titanium' with the first entry in their description reading 'made out of porcelain' ? 'Titanium' appears to be a marketing term meaning 'shiny and slightly brown'.

There appears to be a gap in the market for people who want cutlery made of titanium (because who would not want a titanium spoon?) which isn't irredeemably ugly.

Comments

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

I was thinking less rare than rhenium but less common than gold, which is already at a high. Apparently you can buy palladium in coin and bullion form quite easily. There are some complicated rules on VAT which obviously need to be worked around when investing; I think the way forwards is to visit a dealer in this stuff.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

For pure abundance-against-cost reasons I would have thought tellurium, which costs a few hundred dollars a kilo and has ludicrously low cosmic abundance, could be a decent investment. Though storing it would be hard, it's toxic and reasonably volatile.