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What's the global supply differential of Gold to Iridium?

• saalweachter 13y ago
  I would also object to gold being difficult to extract. Gold is relatively scarce, but about 3-10 times more common in the crust (by ppm on Wikipedia) than Iridium, Rhodium or Rhenium. Production of gold was 55 times higher than Rhenium. I don't know if this because of demand or difficulty of extraction. Rhenium is priced at $142/Troy ounce.
  • daniel-cussen 13y ago
    The $400 figure was the last time I checked--it's a very illiquid market and I remember publicly accessible prices being delayed by months. But rhenium is extracted as a molybdenum impurity, itself an impurity in copper. Most (90%) of it comes from Chile, and the price reflects supply and demand, really. I don't know what the supply elasticity is like, but I suppose suppliers could buy back old copper or molybdenum to purify it if the price warranted it. And because it's an exotic metal, none of the production is artisanal. Gold, on the other hand, has about 25% artisanal production, because mankind has been mining it for thousands of years and the extraction process is simple and well known.