A big bag of this stuff can be picked up at a gardening store for a few bucks but a piece that fits on a pinky sets you back a cool twenty. What gives?

Known to everyone’s who’s ever smelled a really bad fart, sulfur is pretty much everywhere. Combined with hydrogen in your guts or in rotting eggs it gives off one of the most unpleasant stinks known to humans. And, the point here before we get sidetracked too much, is that it’s found pretty much everywhere. Bullion is supposed to be for materials that are rare and valuable. Who in their right mind would pay ten times more for this worthless stuff than a similar amount of silver? Not many. But, again, why is it so expensive in bar form?

Because sulfur is a powdery mess. It melts easily but also burns just as easily. Due to its brittleness when you cast it it tends to break apart or incorporate unwanted bubbles or other imperfections. It crystallizes in unexpected ways ruining a large portion of the half-unfinished pieces. It drives our techs nuts. In short, you’re mostly paying for the trouble it takes to make the damn thing behave as though it were an ordinary building material. Google the phrase “made of pure sulfur” and you’ll get llistings for… this page.

Few, it seems, have ever bothered making objects out of this substance be it for the bother or for the pointlessness. Well, now at least you know your money will be going towards a bit of trailblazing in the world of materials engineering. Short of that, there’s always the alternative of swallowing it and turning it into a foul smelling cloud with which to amuse your friends for… science.