On Sun, 18 Jul 2010 11:28:06 -0500, the renowned Jim Yanik
wrote:

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in
:

AH-SO! At last we're communicating. Yep, usenet is tough that way
sometimes. Here's the missing piece: The solder I buy IS KESTER. The
EXACT same stuff that you buy. Only two differences: The disparity in
formulations is less, and the price is roughly half.

Fascinating. Perhaps someone, somewhere will have an explanation.




different businesses mark up at different prices.
name brands often go at higher rates,and less popular items may get priced
lower to move them.

Solder prices for single pound lots are all over the map- they change
with voltatile metal prices and some distributors may have old stock.

http://www.lme.com/tin_graphs.asp
http://www.lme.com/lead_graphs.asp

There's been roughly a 4:1 price range in lead and 2.5:1 in tin over
the past three years. Currently tin costs about 10x as much as lead,
so you'd expect about a 10-11% price difference due to cost of the
metals. At current prices there's around $5.30 worth of metals in a
pound of solder, of which only 30 cents or so is lead. There's also
the plastic spool, the cardboard box and 10-15 grams of flux.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com