[Milsurplus] $134 for a pound of solder?

[C Whitaker]

de WB2CPN
Trivia I learned while with AT&T Long Lines.
Back then all the telephone equipment in a
Central Office was wired to a Distributing
Frame, and a circuit was built by wiring
cross-connects on the frame.  That activity
used Frame Wire and Solder.  When circuits
were removed, and the equipment made available
for re-use, the cross-connect wires had to
be removed.  And the solder was cleaned off
the frame terminals.  This generated large
bags of recyclable wire, and buckets of
recyclable solder.  AT&T had a wholy-owned
subsidiary on Staten Island, NY, called
Nassau Smelting, that recovered the copper
and lead/tin, etc.  The copper was sent to
a Western Electric frame wire factory in
North Carolina, but the lead/tin was remade
into Nassau Brand solder, and redistributed
to AT&T and the Bell System companies to once
again be used on a distributing frame.
I never saw an estimate of how many times a
specific molecule of solder went around the
cycle, but Nassau's logo was "Products With A
Pedigree".  End of Trivia.
73  Clete
P.S.  I prefer Ersin MultiCore myself.