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Author: Subject: What's the most expensive substance you've bought?
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[*] posted on 7-9-2016 at 21:06


Quote: Originally posted by Melgar  
Where do you get gallium for $22 for 100 grams? Just got 100g of scrap indium for like $30, and really wouldn't mind making some galinstan for additional testing purposes. I made Field's metal from Bismuth, Indium, and Tin, which is liquid below water's boiling point and doesn't contain lead or cadmium. Trying to see if I can use it as a liquid electrode in place of mercury.


I buy in Kg amounts that come by ocean vessels... uhh.. barges? Then freight to my place of business/living. I would gladly trade for some indium however Ive been reading about a lot of people getting tungsten or cadmium when ordering indium. Are you certain its indium? I also have sodium and am looking to get potassium. ive traded Na for Hg... I am easy to work with but I sure hope im talking to an honest person this week i got ripped off locally though.

OH, USA ONLY




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[*] posted on 8-5-2018 at 11:47


Hg, $51/lb
Ga, ~$70/100g

all converted to usd from my local currency




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[*] posted on 8-5-2018 at 12:20


Must have been Cyanoethyl N,N-diisopropylchlorophosphoramidite, although I luckily didn't have to pay for it myself.
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[*] posted on 8-5-2018 at 12:58


Had to use a gold catalyst (AuCl3) once, back in grad school, when gold was a bit cheaper, but still pricey. My advisor wined about the cost (his idea to use the gold catalyst). I asked him if I could get my degree faster if I could make the gold in the lab from lead...He was not amused, but stopped complaining about the cost. Years ago Pfizer had a bunch of gold powder ($100,000+) in a lab (not sure what it was for) in MO that apparently disappeared after they laid off the entire group. I guess that become someones severance pay bonus.

We had some gallon bottles of N, N, N'-trimethyl-ethylenediamine for one project, which I think cost ~$4000 each...

Some of the Kalrez O-rings we used were $100+ each, other gaskets were even higher. Doing research is very expensive, but we were in industry then, so no one balked at it.

Just buying some Pd, Pt, or Rh is usually a big purchase.

And radiolabelled compounds, tritium, deuterium, or 14C are all insanely priced, some are $5000/g range, I'm sure many are higher. We had one tagged compound that I got 5 mg for $5000, but it was a 5 years supply for an assay that ran millions of wells a year. And I got a better deal than the last time they bought it.
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[*] posted on 8-5-2018 at 14:18


i was recently offered a 50mg sample of 3N Tc for 1350 euros. now i dont mind the odd Os bowling ball or nice ingot of rhodium, but this is where i draw the line for my element collection. call me a wowser :)

[Edited on 8-5-2018 by diddi]




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[*] posted on 8-5-2018 at 14:33


Gold and silver. I cant wait for the US dollar to fail



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[*] posted on 8-5-2018 at 16:48


10g of silver nitrate (per gram)
Silver metal (total cost)
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[*] posted on 9-5-2018 at 00:08


The most expensive compound I purchased recently was 1/20 bitcoin for $600. Weight is appr. 0.0, so per gram this is very expensive. Unfortunately around one quarter of my purchase evaporated last months and only something worth around $450 is left behind.

Another expensive purchase I made was 10 grams of pure almost oxide-free barium metal, ampouled under argon for EUR 120 and 10 grams of cesium in a lovely ampoule for EUR 150.

My best purchases were 160 grams of ammonium perrhenate for GBP 40 and 8 ampoules with 1 gram of H2PtCl6, all together for EUR 50, including shipping.




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[*] posted on 9-5-2018 at 01:07


LSD tartrate, £5 for 100 micrograms, so I paid at the value of £50000/g! I suppose Botox is even more expensive than that, being dosed in the nano gram range, but I haven't had the need to buy that, and probably never will!
Other than that perhaps two synthetic diamonds, golden in colour, that I hope to use to make a diamond anvil cell one day. Although they were not very expensive at all compared to natural diamonds.
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[*] posted on 9-5-2018 at 08:48


Quote: Originally posted by woelen  

My best purchases were 160 grams of ammonium perrhenate for GBP 40 and 8 ampoules with 1 gram of H2PtCl6, all together for EUR 50, including shipping.

@Woelen 160g NH4ReO4 for GBP40?! Thats GBP0.36/g of Re! Is Re really that cheap?!

[Edited on 09/05/18 by fusso]




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[*] posted on 9-5-2018 at 09:57


Quote: Originally posted by woelen  
The most expensive compound I purchased recently was 1/20 bitcoin for $600. Weight is appr. 0.0, so per gram this is very expensive. Unfortunately around one quarter of my purchase evaporated last months and only something worth around $450 is left behind.


I purchased 2200 USD of BTC before the pump and made out with a small fortune. If I had played my cards right I could have made four times that.




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[*] posted on 9-5-2018 at 10:06


Over time something as commonplace as water starts to add up, whether water filters for the fridge or bottled water in addition to typical sources piped in - and in some places heavy bags of salt to soften hard water along with all that jazz. Factor in garden hoses, maintenance of pipes, faucets, pumps and wells and all things used to handle water. And people with pools, keeping the water clean and analysing paraphernalia with chemical treatment costs, filters, pumps, etc. What have I forgotten?
I guess for a single chemical item maybe it would be this roll of platinum wire for $116.00
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/files.php?pid=202104&...

Or this ~13 kilogram roll of Nilo filler wire which is 36% nickel and the rest mostly iron with 1.6% niobium, 0.2% carbon, and 0.4% manganese. It's similar to Invar. I was planning to use it for some Curie motors or reduce the nickel content to around 28% hopefully making it behave like gadolinium having a room temperature Curie point. But I haven't found a way to make/melt the alloy yet. As is, the Curie point of the wire is slightly less than nickel wire if I recall.
http://www.pulse-jets.com/phpbb3/download/file.php?id=15422&...
http://www.pulse-jets.com/phpbb3/download/file.php?id=15421&...

"Invar, also known generically as FeNi36 (64FeNi in the US), is a nickel–iron alloy notable for its uniquely low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE or α). The name Invar comes from the word invariable, referring to its relative lack of expansion or contraction with temperature changes."

"It was invented in 1896 by Swiss physicist Charles Édouard Guillaume. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1920 for this discovery, which enabled improvements in scientific instruments."
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[*] posted on 10-5-2018 at 09:30


Quote: Originally posted by fusso  
Quote: Originally posted by woelen  

My best purchases were 160 grams of ammonium perrhenate for GBP 40 and 8 ampoules with 1 gram of H2PtCl6, all together for EUR 50, including shipping.

@Woelen 160g NH4ReO4 for GBP40?! Thats GBP0.36/g of Re! Is Re really that cheap?!

[Edited on 09/05/18 by fusso]

No, it is much more expensive, that's why I call this one of my best purchases. The seller simply did not know what it was and wanted to get rid of this. No one else saw this auction so I took it before anyone else could reserve it.




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[*] posted on 10-5-2018 at 10:27


I have bought some fairly expensive things in my time, but none of them was anything like as expensive as some of the materials I made.

They were derivatives of oligomers. The synthesis was about a pound a gram.
Isolating the individual components by prep scale HPLC took a few weeks and gave rise to tens of milligrams.
My time was charged at £120 per hour
Call it 40 hrs a week £4800 per week
£15000 or so for the work-up to give perhaps a hundred mg of material in total of half a dozen components.
£2400 for each component
but only a few mg of some of them.
The thick end of a million pounds a gram.
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[*] posted on 10-5-2018 at 17:45


Quote: Originally posted by wg48  
My most expensive purchase was probably an allotrope of carbon.
It seemed particularly expensive at the time as it was contaminated with impure gold and astronomically expensive in the end, considering how much the divorce cost. LOL

Hard to beat ozone's purchase on a per gram basis.

Do you know why divorce costs so much?

Because it's worth it.

This coming from someone who used to work in the diamond industry, and has handled diamonds worth more than I'll probably make in a lifetime.

But to stay on-topic, the most expensive substance I've bought for chemistry purposes was probably palladium. However, I made about $10k trading precious metals immediately following the 2008 recession.

As far as bitcoins, I have a 240 BTC claim at the defunct exchange Mt. Gox. They had 75% of their bitcoins stolen in 2014, but then the remaining 25% went up in value so much that they sort of became solvent again. The claim is shared between my brother and I, but still, even 25% of 240 BTC is a pretty huge amount. It's just all tied up in Japanese bankruptcy courts at the moment.

You'll all be seeing plenty of pictures of my lab when that pays out. :D

[Edited on 5/11/18 by Melgar]




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[*] posted on 10-5-2018 at 18:20


I once priced out heavy water for a research project. Something like $1k per quart.
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[*] posted on 22-5-2018 at 13:10
impulse buy


Lead210 $90 I always wanted Po 210 (don't ask lol) after looking carefully at halflifes i diced on the lead less potent buy more versatile , unfortunatly i did not research a good detector................ if anyone has a used real / true cloud chamber detector used cheap or accurate "rad" meter message me
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[*] posted on 26-5-2018 at 14:56


Recently bought a 1/10 Oz. Platinum Coin for $115 Dollars U.S.. About 3.1 Grams.

Not counting illicit substances, that would be top price per gram for me.
..........................................................................................

Quote: Originally posted by woelen

My best purchases were 160 grams of ammonium perrhenate for GBP 40 and 8 ampoules with 1 gram of H2PtCl6, all together for EUR 50, including shipping.
...........................................................................................

Good price Woelen!

I bought my Platinum, for conversion into Chloroplatinic Acid. Currently listed by some suppliers, at $100 U.S. per Gram. Spendy.

If you made your purchase in the modern era, you did very well indeed!

As a side note: The price of Ruthenium has jumped. Possibly due entirely to speculation.

It was priced at about $60/Oz during the last two years or so. At most recent check, it was around $250/Oz... Not the most active or versatile of catalysts, it does have it uses. But, at $250/Oz, a sizable percentage of the price of Platinum, it loses a lot of its allure.

http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/ruthenium/5-...

Explanation: https://www.valuewalk.com/2017/04/ruthenium-price-surge/



[Edited on 26-5-2018 by zed]

[Edited on 26-5-2018 by zed]
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[*] posted on 27-5-2018 at 05:45


I bought a Magic the Gathering card for $800 once, at a weight of 1.72 grams that comes out to $14466/oz troy.

In terms of chemicals, way back when I bought some chlorotrimethylsilane from eBay for the egregious price of about $170 shipped. The shipping was charged at $50 which was not part of the listing, they tacked it on at the end because of hazmat. The amount I bought? 100 grams.




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[*] posted on 2-6-2018 at 07:42


Gold, I think.
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[*] posted on 8-3-2019 at 13:21


Quote: Originally posted by woelen  
The most expensive compound I purchased recently was 1/20 bitcoin for $600. Weight is appr. 0.0, so per gram this is very expensive. Unfortunately around one quarter of my purchase evaporated last months and only something worth around $450 is left behind.

Another expensive purchase I made was 10 grams of pure almost oxide-free barium metal, ampouled under argon for EUR 120 and 10 grams of cesium in a lovely ampoule for EUR 150.

My best purchases were 160 grams of ammonium perrhenate for GBP 40 and 8 ampoules with 1 gram of H2PtCl6, all together for EUR 50, including shipping.
Bitcoin is very volatile and my $600 amount of bitcoin evaporated further. Only $150 worth of bitcoin is left.
Fortunately, my NH4ReO4 still is standing here firmly. I now did some tests to be sure that it is the real thing and YES, it really is.




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[*] posted on 8-3-2019 at 14:14


Platinium coated titanium electrode
I got tired of messy carbon and lead anodes $60

[Edited on 8-3-2019 by symboom]




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[*] posted on 8-3-2019 at 14:35


Think this thread should be pinned.



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[*] posted on 8-3-2019 at 16:28


5 ounces of gold




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[*] posted on 8-3-2019 at 16:50


Two bags of silicone gel. :cool:



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