Those are my investment “precious metals”, since 9-11-01.
That is the best metal investment you can make. In difficult times, it will be so valuable you won’t even exchange any of it. Merely showing it to people will get you what you want.
“...brass, copper and lead...” [Delta 21, post 13]
Wonderful image & message.
Bullet jackets aren’t plain copper. They are gilding metal, a 95-5 alloy of copper and zinc. In other words, a form of brass.
It took the US War Dept 30 years of experimenting to come up with a mix & attendant heat treatment to minimize jacket metal fouling. Before that, special lubricants were used by target shooters to avoid much metal fouling by cupronickel jackets (in use since smokeless small arms ammo was introduced, in 1892). Lube was impractical for field use in rifles, and in machine guns generally.
Some bullet makers use solid bronze. Don’t know the formulation.