The price of a gram of rhodium, the most expensive precious metal, which is used both in jewelry and in the automotive industry, continues to rise in the markets.
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If we took a poll on the street and asked what the most expensive precious metal is today, what would people say? Moreover, if the person writing this had been one of the passers-by on that same street and had been interviewed, clearly, he would not have been right. One could think of gold, the most topical answer, or whoever knows something about this type of matter would remember platinum, or the smartest, palladium. But none of them would have been right.
The most expensive precious metal on the market is rhodium. And it doesn't stop going up. An ascent that began only a couple of years ago and that seems to have no ceiling. Without going any further, today's price, in the middle of this hot and very strange month of July and in grams, which in ounces is the most possible to lose, is the following: For a gram of rhodium, yes, yes, I repeat, for one gram you pay 225 euros in the market where these things are listed. Almost 4 times more than palladium, the second on the list, which slightly exceeds 58. Behind it are gold, valued at just over 50 euros, and platinum, which does not even reach 25 euros. Silver, of course, is hardly quoted.
Why is it so expensive lately?
Rhodium lives its particular golden age. It is, in addition to a chemical element that is part of that table that we learned as youngsters, a rare metal. Only 20 tons of rhodium are extracted annually, the vast majority of them, around 80 percent, in South Africa, and always associated with the extraction of platinum and nickel, inside which it can be found not without difficulty.
The very high price it has in recent years is closely related to one of its main uses. And it is that rhodium is essential to manufacture the catalysts of all cars that consume gasoline; that is, rhodium is essential for cars to be less and less polluting. When that long-awaited electric car that never quite arrives is finally a reality, another rooster will crow, but for now and for this reason, the price of rhodium will not stop rising.
The other sector in which rhodium triumphs is not less sophisticated, but quite the opposite. Any good lover, this is not the case, of jewelry, will know that rhodium plating exists. Some jewels, usually gold or silver, are covered, through an electroplating process, with a layer of rhodium to achieve an extremely bright and resistant finish. With such major profits, together with that of the aeronautical sector, which also pulls rhodium although to a much lesser extent, it is easy to think that in the surveys carried out in the coming years on the most expensive precious metals, the answer will be the same. .. although few people know her.
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