At Specialty Metals, Smelters, and Refiners, we understand the importance of discerning the true nature of your precious metal scrap. Whether you're a jewelry enthusiast, a medical device manufacturer, or a collector, knowing whether your material contains platinum, iridium, or a combination of both is essential for ensuring its value and utility.

With high palladium trading prices, now is a good time to liquidate your palladium scrap holdings. 

Demand is high. Because palladium is a secondary product that is recovered from platinum and nickel mining, miners have limited ability to increase palladium output in response to rising prices. 

Are coins and bullion bars good investments? In today’s post, you will learn what you need to know to make a good decision about whether to sink your money into these popular investments. 

Have you noticed a big change in computers over the last few years?

We’re not talking about the fact that DVD/CD drives have disappeared from most of them – even though that is true. Nor are we talking about the fact that there is no longer a place to plug in an ethernet cable. 

If you read this blog regularly – and we believe you should – you probably think you know everything about precious metals. 

Well maybe you do . . . and maybe you don’t! In our post today, we are going to delve into some of the most common misconceptions about your favorite precious metals – platinum, gold, and silver. 

Another way to identify precious metals . . . 

Do Precious Metals Have Distinctive Smells or Tastes?

We have written on this blog before about what gold, silver, platinum, and other metals look like. Gold is yellow and doesn’t tarnish, for example. Silver is white in color and does collect a layer of chalky tarnish. And platinum is white in color and doesn’t tarnish. 

The platinum group metals (PGMs) consist of six chemically and physically similar elements: platinum (Pt), palladium (Pd), rhodium (Rh), ruthenium (Ru), iridium (Ir), and osmium (Os). These metals are often alloyed with each other and with other elements to create materials with specific properties for various industrial and other applications. 

We recently posted an article, “What Is Rhodium Oxide?” on this blog. If you missed it, we’d  urge you to read it now. Rhodium is a precious metal that should definitely be on your radar.

Platinum engagement rings are not rare. Maybe you called off an engagement and your former fiancé gallantly said, “I gave the ring to you . . . it’s yours, so keep it.” Or maybe you find some platinum engagement ring blanks (rings that have not yet had stones mounted in them) in a jewelry manufacturing company that went out of business. 

What do you get when you mix platinum and iridium, two ultra-valuable white, shiny metals? You get a very valuable alloy with high density and resistance to corrosion and oxidation, even at high temperatures. Those characteristics make the alloy particularly useful. 

Rhodium oxide is a chemical compound formed by rhodium, a rare and precious transition metal, and oxygen. There are multiple oxides of rhodium, but the most common is rhodium(III) oxide, which has a chemical formula Rh2O3. In this compound, rhodium exhibits a +3 oxidation state.

Recycling platinum and platinum scrap is not a job for hobbyists. Some potential risks include:

We haven’t written about sputtering targets in some time. But it’s worth revisiting the topic because money can be made recycling them. Sputtering targets are a very specialized kind of platinum scrap – and in some cases, of gold and silver as well. 

We recently asked Dan Fried, Founder and CEO of Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners, to name a few places where platinum can be found. Some of his advice was surprising and if you follow it, we predict you will find platinum that you can recycle for money. 

We’ve written in the past about recycling platinum laboratory equipment. Back in 2014, for example, we published a post entitled, “Bright Shiny Platinum Could Be Hiding in your Dented and Dirty Old Labware.”

Let’s fast forward to 2023. In the video that accompanies today’s blog post, we interview Dan Fried, President and Founder of Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners, about making money recycling platinum and iridium crucibles. 

What is the most valuable and sought-after precious metal today?

If you ask a group of precious metal investors that question, chances are that most of them will say, “Iridium!” And there are reasons for that. One is that iridium is now trading for more than $6,000/Troy Ounce, which is a very high price. Another reason is that most of those investors have never seen iridium because it is so rare. So it’s mysterious, kind of like unicorns. Everybody can describe a unicorn, but nobody has ever seen one.