The book says weapons cost 2x normal when made of cold iron, I don't see any reason not to apply this to ammunition as well.
Interesting - cold iron doesn't include the standard chart to show alternative costs. It does imply that it can be used to make an arrow, so it should be possible to make bullets as well.
Using the guidelines - that it costs twice as much to create a weapon - I'd have to say you'd just double the price of the paper cartridge.
Hrm, I see your point. The only portion of the item that's really made of cold iron is the bullet. If you were to just create a basic bullet it'd be 2g - and then technically you could take that bullet and load it into a paper cartridge...
Actually, can I make a suggestion?
Don't bother with cold iron bullets. Buy cold iron weapon blanch. It's 50 gold a dose and affects 10 pieces of ammunition, for a total cost of 5g per shot - 8g less than if you actually made the ammo at the lower cost you listed above.
I get ammo for half price as a gunslinger, so I'd only pay 6g50s per cold iron paper cartridge.
Okay, but that's still 1g50s more than going the weapon blanch route. Unless you're planning on 'dual DRing' - having cold iron bullets with a different blanch on them to overcome two types of DR - you're still saving money.
The really interesting question (to me) is how could anyone even make a cold iron bullet? It literally means it was created without heat - no forge, no fire, no heat. It's one thing to pound a metal bar flat and grind an edge onto it to make a cold iron sword - it takes more time and energy, maybe even twice as much time and energy, so it costs 2x as much.
It's another thing entirely to make a perfectly round, smooth, iron sphere by pounding cold iron with a hammer. And if it isn't perfectly round and smooth and spherical, it surely won't be very accurate.
Super simple to make an iron mold, spend all the time you want smoothing it out until its flawless, then pour molten lead into it to make a smooth, round, spherical bullet. But that's not cold iron. I can even make spherical rocks by putting several dozen almost round rocks into a rock-grinder and letting it spin for a few days. But that doesn't work for iron. It might take months, if it even works at all, and that requires a relatively modern bit of machinery.
It would take way way way way more than twice as long to pound out a perfect iron sphere than it would be to cast a molten lead sphere in a mold you already own (gunsmithing kit).
In the end, for the sake of gameplay, I would probably agree that just doubling the bullet cost is fair enough (2gp for a cold-iron bullet instead of 1gp) which only raises the price of an alchemical cartridge from 12gp to 13gp, even though I suspect each bullet would be about 100x more difficult and/or time-consuming to make and no blacksmith or gunsmith would bother with putting in all that time for only 2x the price (he'd go out of business the first week and his kids would have starved to death before the end of the second week).
@BDJ: Ah, I see your point. I was still thinking double the base cost of the whole cartridge.
And breaking it down, I think 13g makes more sense than 24. The regular paper cartridge is 12 gold; that's 10g for the powder, 1 gold for the bullet, and 1 gold for the paper\wax\etc. Since the bullet's the only thing being altered, it's fair to say assume you're just doubling the price of the bullet, not the whole cartridge.
@DM_Blake: I think you're thinking of another material or a different description. Pathfinder cold iron isn't completely unforged. It's a specific type of ore, and it is true that it is forged at a lower temperature than normal iron.
Items without metal parts cannot be made from cold iron. An arrow could be made of cold iron, but a quarterstaff could not. A double weapon with one cold iron half costs 50% more than normal.
Cold iron has 30 hit points per inch of thickness and hardness 10.
That doesn't exactly explain the process, since I think normally you'd plan on melting the metal down and pouring it into a mold. Perhaps some sort of medieval injection molding technique? :P
Sweet. Time to swap out all of my alchemical paper cartridges for cold iron alchemical paper cartridges.
Not to mention you then can blanch them with something else if need arises, and double-bypass DR. :)
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I don't know about the special materials but Mike Brock said in this post that blanches cannot be applied to paper cartridges. I don't think an actual FAQ has been made for it yet.
EDIT: This is in regards to PFS obviously but I know the OP and this is a PFS character question.
@anthonydido: Looks like you may have linked to the wrong post in the thread, but I did find it.
I have to disagree with Mike. I agree with him that you cannot apply a weapon blanch to a paper cartridge, but I'm not certain that's what all people are envisioning.
If I am making the ammo myself, I can treat the bullet before folding it into the cartridge. I guess that does rule out the idea of double-treating on the fly, but I don't see why it would rule out adding a blanch during the creation of the cartridge.
But I'd have to present that to Mike, and I'm not a PFS player so...
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But you can't "make" them. You get a discount. Mike Brock specifically said you can't blanche paper cartridges. There is nothing keeping you from blanching regular bullets though.
EDIT: you took out the part of your post I was replying to, lol.
As far as the special materials. I say go ahead with that route but expect table variation.