Tin Calculator – Work Out the Material Value of Tin
Material Value · Tin
34.69 £
1,000.00 g × 1 × 0.0347 £/g = 34.69 £
Buy-back price: The amount a dealer or refinery actually pays. This is typically 2–10% below the melt value, as processing costs and margin are deducted.
Solder holds electronics together
The largest use of tin is solder. It used to be a tin-lead alloy; since lead-free soldering has become the norm for most electrical equipment, solder consists mainly of tin with small amounts of silver and copper. The tin requirement per solder joint has therefore risen.
This links the tin price to electronics manufacturing — to smartphones, computers, vehicle electronics, photovoltaics. It is demand made up of millions of tiny quantities: a single solder joint weighs milligrams, while the total across world production comes to hundreds of thousands of tonnes.
For the seller this means: electronic scrap contains tin, but spread out and bonded with other metals. Without analysis the quantity cannot be determined, and we deliberately give no estimates for it. Specialised recyclers work with sample analyses.
Pewterware, tinplate, bronze
Pewter tankards, plates and figures are made of tin alloys, formerly often with lead, today lead-free with antimony and copper. Old pieces often bear a fineness mark, and collectors' pieces can be worth more than their material value — this calculator gives the material value, not the collector's value.
Tinplate is tin-coated sheet steel: the tin can. The tin layer is wafer-thin and protects the steel from the contents. As with galvanised steel: anyone who weighs a can is weighing steel, not tin.
Finally, bronze is a copper-tin alloy, and one of the oldest materials of all. The tin content is usually in the single-digit to low double-digit percentage range, but varies depending on the grade — a calculation based on the tin price alone is therefore misleading.
Tin pest and proof of origin
Pure tin has a peculiarity: below around thirteen degrees Celsius, the familiar metallic form is not the stable one, but a brittle, grey powder is. The transformation is very slow and only becomes noticeable at considerably lower temperatures, but it is real — historic tin figures from cold churches show it as grey, crumbly patches. Alloying additions suppress it, which is why everyday pewter is hardly affected.
Origin is economically more significant. Tin is one of the so-called conflict minerals, and importers in the USA and in other markets are subject to supply chain due diligence obligations. This makes sourcing from certain regions more expensive and shifts trade flows.
Supply comes from a few countries anyway, mainly China, Indonesia, Myanmar and Peru. A halt in mining or an export restriction in one of them noticeably moves the world market price — a small market with concentrated supply reacts sensitively.