According to the United Postal Union the USPS is ranked 7th worldwide in terms of reliability. That’s impressive. Less impressive is trying to reach their customer service to find out any information regarding your package’s whereabouts. You don’t want to call the USPS, trust me. The experience is scientifically designed to frustrate you and make you irrationally angry, and possibly send you to long-term therapy even. No matter what the problem is they will not offer you any type of personalized service or information beyond what is already visible in the tracking link.
Speaking of that tracking, for...
The most frequently asked question we get is whether we can make a custom item. The answer is yes… usually. Our company is actually just an office with mostly office-type equipment. The cubes, the display cases and that thing you’re thinking about are all made overseas (China, mostly).
When we want to add a new product to our lineup the project starts out as a simple email to one of these suppliers where we submit the idea and they respond with an analysis of the costs and time required to make it. That first round yields a prototype that...
We send orders all over the world. Literally. We have successfully sent orders to dozens of countries since our start back in 2015 and most likely have already sent items to someone who lives near you. Now let’s go over the trouble spots:
Orders to Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, India and Indonesia must go via UPS or DHL. This is because first class mail deliveries will most likely never reach their destination or if they do take many weeks to get there.
Really sorry but orders can’t be sent to China at all 对不起.
No idea. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Let the website figure it out. Just add stuff to the cart and then go to the checkout. It will give you the full costs prior to finalizing payment.
No
In most cases Luciteria will not be able to buy your items and if we can offer a price it will likely not be very good. Why? Well, first of all we are a small company that, when it comes down to it, is in the import/export business. We buy materials from laboratories and factories which guarantee the purity of the elements they’re selling to us. When we buy from the public however we have to figure out what the purity is ourselves before we can sell it. Which is a problem when you don’t have sophisticated lab equipment...
Yeah, not gonna lie. Measured that way your bullion investments through Luciteria will return awful dividends.
The thing to remember is that in the making of the cubes (or most other items) the cost of the underlying metal is only part of what goes into the final cost of the piece. Just as you don’t buy jewelry by weight the same applies here. Whereas a machine can spit out finished objects at very low cost, the making of the cubes involves many steps involving several different workers.
No, sorry. Our office is located in an office building with a secured entrance not open to the general public except by appointment. You’re not missing much to be honest. Just about everything we sell on the site comes to us from overseas labs pre-packaged and is stored in bins and shelves for easy shipping rather than showcasing. We did consider having a retail front but the permits and insurance are a headache so leaving this for some future date to consider.
Yes. If the item is still showing on the website it hasn’t been discontinued and we mean to replenish it. It’s just that, this stupid trade war with China is making it hard to maintain appropriate stock levels. We’ve added a waitlist option to each product page where you can add your email address and we’ll alert you as soon as we have new stock.
Your order will not come with a paper certificate showing a compositional analysis, only a label identifying the element (and purity on >1g samples). I like to warn customers who ask for a certificate something that seems common sensical: you know it’s just a piece of paper, right? An official looking certificate can be made in Word in, oh, about five minutes one handed while drinking coffee. The only COA you should trust is the one provided not by the seller but by an independent lab.
However, we get it. It’s not practical to send your ten grams of whatever...
Currently, for Washington state and California the answer is yes. Other states may or may not according to rules imposed on the payment gateway. We’re not aware of the rates or even whether they’re imposed or not because it happens earlier in the payment process than we have anything to do with.
For international orders we do not charge any taxes, duties or VAT. These are assessed at the point of entry at your destination and happens haphazardly. We can - and do - typically lower the declared value for these orders to both help avoid attracting the wrong kind...
This is a problem that is especially evident in the following metals: tungsten, rhenium, ruthenium, iridium and osmium. The reason is the manufacturing method. Since all of these have a melting point above what an industrial furnace can achieve instead of melting they are sintered. This is a metallurgical process that takes metal powder and heats it while simultaneously applying great pressure. The combined effect of heating and compression result in the internal structure effectively welding itself together to form what is visibly a solid metal. Microscopic analysis, however, reveals the interior to contain many small air pockets. Those...
Don’t be. Osmium as a solid metal poses no danger at all. It can be handled, worn, licked even. The concern arises when the metal is turned into powder; which is the case as offered for industrial applications. This is because the tiny dust-sized grains are susceptible to oxidation, especially when heated. Oxidized osmium forms into a feared poison, osmium tetroxide, which can, if you’re unlucky enough to get it into your eyes, permanently blind you. So it’s no joke. That being said, osmium in solid form will not oxidize unless you heat it with a blowtorch to cherry red. You’re not going to do this, right? Promise? Ok then. We’re good.
Sometimes the product gets damaged during shipping, especially with international shipments. We try really hard to pack it as best we can. If your product is damaged in shipping we will give you a refund or store credit. Please do send us a picture as it helps us figure out better ways to protect goods during shipping.
With the exception of our radioactive samples, all the elements we provide come in the same ratios as found in nature. Isolating specific isotopes is beyond the scope of what an ordinary laboratory or refiner can accomplish. This is a process that requires high speed centrifuges and is prohibitively expensive and difficult. So much so that it’s beyond the capabilities of even government-run labs. To list the most high profile example, Iran has invested billions of dollars over the course of decades in attempting to isolate uranium-235 to make nuclear bombs and they’re still struggling in this endeavor. The...
This is not unusual and it can usually be handled fairly easily. If it’s dirt or fingerprints then wash with a mild soap or detergent and lukewarm water. Use a clean, soft cloth or sponge. Rinse well and blot dry with a damp cloth or chamois. To maintain it’s luster wax occasionally with a quality grade of automobile paste wax (not a cleaner/wax combo). Apply a think coach with a clean, cotton flannel cloth. Then wipe with a clean damp cloth. We’ve seen this clear up most scuffs and marks on lucite. Do not use abrasive cleaners, window cleaner,...
Loo-See-Tee-Ree-Ahh. Rhymes with cafeteria. Yeah, well, that’s what you get when two kids are goofing off. The year was 2015 and my sister Seven and I were driving through a storm in Texas when out of the blue she wondered why not start a business? She said “I bet I can sell furniture made out of Lucite. I’ll call it, I don’t know, Luciteria!” {laughs] and I joined in “Ooh, I know, I can have my elements cast in blocks of Lucite”. And with that joke a few weeks later we nabbed luciteria.com and got to work....
