WHAT!!! $3000.00 an ounce

[tamrock]

I buy or trade gold and silver for mostly vintage watches and jewelry pieces at this PM buyer / coin shop. As I was scanning all the goodies he has in the cases I saw what looks like a silver ounce, with 3000 on it, but I soon realized it's rhodium. I wonder if rhodium was ever used in anything you could recover by scrap? It's been used for some time as a plating over silver in some cases to prevent tarnishing, but clearly a little amount must go a long ways for that use. I've got one piece of English Silver, made around the later 1860s, that's rhodium plated and I would say it looks like a somewhat heavy plating over it. It still has a bright untarnish luster, as though it was made no more than 10 years ago.

 

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[BigWaveDave]

I recall my wife having her engagement and wedding rings rhodium plated.
Yeah they were cleaned up and prettier, but I couldn’t understand why it was so expensive to have done...guess at 3 Dimes an ounce, I get it now.

 

[Duckshot]

Don't really know for sure but I heard someplace that rhodium plates very well but forming a bar of it is some kind of magic trick.

 

[ARC]

Its the second rarest element on earth... Its used to hide imperfections and a higher sheen to silver / white gold and a protective coat from scratches.

South Africa produces 80% of it.

Personally... I don't like plated anything... it does wear off and looks like crap and will require a re plating.

 

[namxat]

Hi,

Rhodium is a platium group metal. As such it wont tarnish, not in 10 years and not in 100 years. Besides pating silver, its used in catalysts (i guess both car and industrial). Its price shows high volatility and has over ten years ago peaked over 10k dollars, yet was also lower as common platinum some day. Kitco gives a current price of around 2600 USD, so 3000 for small scale physical is not so out of question.

Its exotic, I would not invest physical.

I lost money on it (paper not pysical).


Greets Namxat

 

[Kray Gelder]

Tamrock, I had a flea market business for a few years, that I stopped about twelve years ago. I sold cheap jewelry, gold plated bling, and sterling silver stuff, rings mostly. I sold hundreds of rhodium plated silver rings. I had this weekend business grossing $24,000 per year, mostly $5 to$10 per sale. Ugh! Extreme theft, extreme annoyance...Anyway, never really researched Rhodium. Here's what I dug up this morning:

Extremely rare, only about 3 tons are produced globally per year.
80% is used in automotive catalytic converters, and as a catalyst to make nitric acid and acetic acid.

Nitric acid: 80% is used in making fertilizers, the balance is used to manufacture such things as nylon, explosives, adipic acid, toluone, diisocyanate (TDI), and nitobenzene.

Acetic acid: 6 million tons produced annually mainly through Rhodium catalyts. Has 358 industrial uses. Primarily to make vinyl acetate monomer, and as a preservative in food production, beverages, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and animal feed.

Now I see the high trading price and why.