Low Tech Value of Zinc

[Tyneras]

In GURPS Low Tech Companion 3 (p. 22) it states:

The cost of copper in the Classical Mediterranean was $18/lb., while tin was over $122/lb.!

Are there any similar numbers for zinc? I ask because brass was common, and zinc is much more abundant than tin but also a pain to work with at low TLs as I understand. Mercury would be handy to know too.

[Celjabba]

As far as a quick search show, the only prices for zinc are in LTC3 p 22 (generic price for soft metals such as copper, zinc, lead as raw material) and in Pyramid 87 p 17 (also generic price for soft metals as cargo)

And in Pyramid 119 p36, discussing the relatives values of metal in Cidri (but with a note that it is close to medieval earth ratios)

[zoncxs]

What you quoted was only an example for pricing of one material.

Same page, beginning of that paragraph:

"All prices on the table assume ready access to the natural
resources from which the materials are processed. In practice,
scarcity and transport costs can drive up prices."

Soft metals is priced at $4.30 per pound. That includes copper, zinc, lead, and other metals available at TL1.

This assumes they are all readily available. Otherwise the GM will have to adjust the price for each individual material based on what they want.

For example, for a Fantasy setting, you can make iron more rare, bringing the price up from $6.90 to $13.80.

You can also change the prices based on locations. Maybe a city is located near a copper deposit, making the price there as low as $1.20 per lbs for it.

[Anthony]

It doesn't appear that metallic zinc was produced in bulk before early TL 4, though occasional older artifacts are found and it's possible to produce zinc brass without metallic zinc (e.g. Calamine brass.

[Anders]

Earlier sources don't differentiate clearly between brass and bronze. I would use the same effective cost for zinc, although - yes - it wasn't produced in metallic form until 1688.

[whswhs]

To the best of my knowledge, zinc was not recognized as a metal at TL1-3. The traditional list of metals is silver, mercury, copper, gold, iron, tin, and lead, corresponding to the planets of traditional astrology. The history that I've read has bronze being made by alloying metallic copper with metallic tin, but brass by putting zinc ore into copper. So I don't think there would be a known price for zinc as a metal.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by whswhs

To the best of my knowledge, zinc was not recognized as a metal at TL1-3. The traditional list of metals is silver, mercury, copper, gold, iron, tin, and lead, corresponding to the planets of traditional astrology. The history that I've read has bronze being made by alloying metallic copper with metallic tin, but brass by putting zinc ore into copper. So I don't think there would be a known price for zinc as a metal.

Yeah, that would be my guess on how they did it. There are plenty of zinc ores to choose from. The Greek term for the lot of them was καδμία, from which we get the name cadmium (chemically similar to zinc). According to the Source of All Earthly Knowledge (Wikipedia), they would take the mineral calamine (which is now recognized to be a mixture of two minerals) and use a process called [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calamine_brass]cementation[/url] to produce "Calamine Brass."

[Anthony]

Wikipedia has an okay blurb on ancient use of zinc. Does appear that it was allowed into brass directly from ores, though might have appeared in limited quantities earlier.

Separately from this is why? I can't think of any particular low-tech purpose where you'd want relatively pure zinc, I doubt galvanzing was possible all that much before it was actually done.

[Tyneras]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Wikipedia has an okay blurb on ancient use of zinc. Does appear that it was allowed into brass directly from ores, though might have appeared in limited quantities earlier.

Separately from this is why? I can't think of any particular low-tech purpose where you'd want relatively pure zinc, I doubt galvanzing was possible all that much before it was actually done.

Mostly to get a rough estimate what brass would cost. Zinc was isolated as a metal by 1300 in India and exported to Europe, and brasses as high as 90% zinc date back to 1400 BC, though the smelting directly from zinc ore and copper was the common method.

It's just been one of those things that sticks in my mind. I've also discovered that the chinese used nickel enough to make cupronickel coins around 1400 BC (isolated in Europe around 1751)but its debatable if they knew what they had. So now my list of ancient metals that will annoy me is zinc, mercury and nickel.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Except for it's uses in electrical technology and to galvanize metals, there aren't a lot of uses outside of alloys.

So unless you're doing a sort of steampunk or dieselpunk, there's not a lot of low-tech uses.