In what follows we study the history of the tin market over the period I982-5. Important questions this exercise will help to answer are: Was the collapse of the tin market a failure of the buffer stock operation and was it inevitable? Was the activity of the buffer stock a commodity market manipulation? Was there a deficiency in the drafting of the tin agreement?Was there a failure of commodity market regulation? More generally, while it has long been recognised that stabilisation schemes are vulnerable to speculative attacks, the interconection between buffer stock managements and futures markets has not been explored. In this sense, our historical analysis will