World's most expensive paint.

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Lol that was my first thought before I clicked but I didn't want to say it.

See the thing is bright colors are not as valuable as they were in Roman times. Royalty would where bright reds, purples, yellows etc.. because it was expensive to make the dies. Now that the average t-shirt can be made with these colors for pennies the wealthy swapped fashions with the middle class and started wearing muted browns, blacks, and grays.
 
It's a German company, Kremer Pigments. The story is great 10,000 snails are used to make each gram and they still have not been able to recreate the process that the Romans used. It's also a great place to get arsenic sulphide yellow just in case nothing else will do.

That sounds like a good use of a very rare species. The dye was synthesized first in 1903.

Comparison of the organically synthesized dye with the commercial dye showed matching spectra in the infrared, Raman and visible, which also matched with published spectra of Tyrian purple. This illustrates not only the possibility of achieving nature’s molecules in the laboratory, but also obtaining dyes of analytical quality.

MMJ | Spectral Comparison of Commercial and Synthesized Tyrian Purple (page 3 of 3)

No doubt the golden eye crowd can see the difference.
 
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No doubt the golden eye crowd can see the difference.

Yup, quite an analog to the audiophile community. This is only one example there are many more from numerous toxic chemicals to real fish glue from sturgeon bladders. Yes, YOU can't see (hear) the difference. :)

BTW Steve your comment is a little creepy are you stalking me or something? My favorite hobby is painting, I just thougth this was funny. No big need to find a link to a contradictory site.
 
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The story is great 10,000 snails are used to make each gram and they still have not been able to recreate the process that the Romans used.

Must be a glut of butter and garlic around there --- yummmmyyyyy -- I'll take that with a fine burgundy while we're at it.

Ever see Gordon Ramsay's kids grow snails? -- comestible snails that is -- it's somewhere on Youtube.
 
Yup, quite an analog to the audiophile community. This is only one example there are many more from numerous toxic chemicals to real fish glue from sturgeon bladders. Yes, YOU can't see (hear) the difference. :)

BTW Steve your comment is a little creepy are you stalking me or something? My favorite hobby is painting, I just thougth this was funny. No big need to find a link to a contradictory site.

No, I'm not stalking you. I don't understand why what I said was creepy. I only checked the net because, as a chemist who's specialty was synthesizing organic compounds, I wanted to see what the dye was that it couldn't be made synthetically.
 
Same stuff chemically? Should look the same then. No important impurities in the snail kind?

The snail extract was probably less pure. It seems that dye can have a range of hues depending on how it is used, whether snail or synthetic depending on things like ph of the dye solution and salt content.

Bottom line is, if it measures the same, it looks the same.
 
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Hmmm... I was thinking more of how reflective it might be, or how opaque. Measured a certain way, it might be the same, but seen from a different angle it could appear different if its not pure.

I'm not a dye expert, for sure. But I work for a long time in color matching. Even if the colors were the same - the binders, carriers, etc made a difference in how they were perceived. But if both the natural and the synthetic dyes are the same, they will look the same.

Just wondering (idly) if the snail juice carries something "extra" along with it that might make it look different under certain conditions. That sort of thing was always a big headache for me in color matching.
 
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No, I'm not stalking you. I don't understand why what I said was creepy. I only checked the net because, as a chemist who's specialty was synthesizing organic compounds, I wanted to see what the dye was that it couldn't be made synthetically.

I'm sorry Steve I had one of those "someone is walking on my grave moments". I never though of couching this in the audiophile paradyme. This is great actually almost like someone paying $250,000 for cables. If it measures the same it looks the same, yes indeed.

If I had known you were a chemist I would have understood.
 
Hmmm... I was thinking more of how reflective it might be, or how opaque. Measured a certain way, it might be the same, but seen from a different angle it could appear different if its not pure.

I'm not a dye expert, for sure. But I work for a long time in color matching. Even if the colors were the same - the binders, carriers, etc made a difference in how they were perceived. But if both the natural and the synthetic dyes are the same, they will look the same.
We sell custom surfaces to large OEM's, office equipment, medical, and retailers -- color, color permanence, reflectivity, texture, durability and time-to-market. All the test and measurement apparatus gets calibrated at least yearly, some more frequently, and it's all traceable.
 
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