Originally posted by VolOpt:

Ingots on the other hand make zero sense
Since the player has
1) Already transported the ore to some level of base/outpost by way of foot/cart or boat.
2) put in the effort to smelt/purify them (read: did the thing)

This is not true. All materials required to make a smelter are portalable, and you only need a workbench to place it. It would be very easy to just smelt the ore and portal out and thus teleporting ore becomes trivially easy. It takes nearly no effort to build a smelter anywhere you got a portal if you have the materials and you can simply portal over the coal and smelt everything without needing to take it back to a base.