I'm amazed how cheap that sounds. Does that mean that for a cost of a decent lap...

HeyLaughingBoy · on Nov 6, 2018

That's probably slabs of billet: unprocessed steel right from the mill. Not cold rolled bars or rods, or sheet.

I only know a little about steel prices from being a hobby machinist, but I know a bit more about hay prices. For the price of a cheap laptop, you can get two tons of hay delivered :-)

hectormalot · on Nov 6, 2018

Actually I was thinking of hot rolled. Turns out the regional differences are huge:

Hot rolled in US is 928$ per metric ton

Hot rolled in EU is 620$ per metric ton

China is in the mid 500s.

Unclear to me if the new US tariffs are to blame, gap is larger than the 25% I expected.

Source: http://steelbenchmarker.com/files/history.pdf