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I've been watching the price of Palladium soar above gold during the past few months, but I checked the price of Rhodium today and was surprised. The later has increased in value by 25% during the past month.

I don't normally pay much attention to either metal as they have minimal impact on my business.

Supposedly the recent increase is due to the automotive catalyst markets, but with gains of this magnitude, I suspect that investor speculation is the major factor.

Does anyone have any thoughts or comments on what is happening to the market for these two metals?

I'll just observe the fairly obvious that rhodium has been far higher in the recent past. The three way catalytic converter uses Rh Pd and Pt - all three metals - and the first two are the rarest. Why high now? I don't know. Maybe the question should be why were they lower for a while.

For me, if they're not monetary metals, I don't pay attention to them. My LCS doesn't deal in palladium or rhodium.

Palladium has been monetized at least in the sense of gold and silver and platinum by government coin issue with a default face value. There is a long list of palladium coins and they do get some trading action.

Not saying there has never been a rhodium coin but I've never heard of one so even though it has jewelry usage rhodium is clearly not monetized.

Edit for further research:

I've seen suggestions that this was supposedly the first Rhodium coin from Tuvalu, new for 2018...

https://online.kitco.com/buy/31034/1-oz ... -999-31034

However Cook Islands issued some Rhodium coins during 2014-2017

https://www.bellevuerarecoins.com/the-m ... ium-coins/

68Camaro wrote:Palladium has been monetized at least in the sense of gold and silver and platinum by government coin issue with a default face value. There is a long list of palladium coins and they do get some trading action.

Not saying there has never been a rhodium coin but I've never heard of one so even though it has jewelry usage rhodium is clearly not monetized.

Edit for further research:

I've seen suggestions that this was supposedly the first Rhodium coin from Tuvalu, new for 2018...

https://online.kitco.com/buy/31034/1-oz ... -999-31034

However Cook Islands issued some Rhodium coins during 2014-2017

https://www.bellevuerarecoins.com/the-m ... ium-coins/

Interesting info, but I'll stick with traditional monetary PM's. The majority of people are going to know what old Ag/Au coins are and what they look like. Many (including me) would not be able to instantly recognize platinum or palladium. Selling them could be an issue because of their unfamiliarity. My LCS guy had a palladium coin that he was trying to sell for a year, no takers.

Can always send to the smelter but yeah - they won't be the obvious choice for a lot of folks. Definitely the "lunatic fringe" of the PM world. But I'm one of them.

I think I might own a little bit of palladium in coin form. Not all my coins are a precious metal play.

If you want to get even more obscure than palladium and rhodium, take a look at ruthenium. Ruthenium was around $50ish in early 2017 and a LCS here was talking about it. Two of the guys in the shop both took positions around that time. Now it is around $266/oz. It was $875ish ca. 2007 so some would say it still has a good ways to rally. I don't own any ruthenium and feel it would be VERY HARD to sell without taking a bath on the price.

Thank you for your input, everyone. I figured I'd bring the subject up as it's rarely discussed here. Kitco had a couple of articles this week predicting Palladium could hit $2,000 this year. The current Pt/Au/Pd ratios are unprecedented. Looking at historical prices, Pt looks like the best buy of the 3 metals.

68Camaro wrote:I'll just observe the fairly obvious that rhodium has been far higher in the recent past.

Yes, and from what I've read that major Rhodium price jump was mainly the result of the actions of one large catalyst buyer for the major automotive companies.

68Camaro wrote:Not saying there has never been a rhodium coin but I've never heard of one so even though it has jewelry usage rhodium is clearly not monetized.

Check out this past Realcent post about Rhodium: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=39599 I think the Cohen Mint was the first to make a Rhodium coin It's a difficult metal to make bullion coins out of because of its physical properties.

Recyclersteve wrote:If you want to get even more obscure than palladium and rhodium, take a look at ruthenium. Ruthenium was around $50ish in early 2017 and a LCS here was talking about it. Two of the guys in the shop both took positions around that time. Now it is around $266/oz. It was $875ish ca. 2007 so some would say it still has a good ways to rally. I don't own any ruthenium and feel it would be VERY HARD to sell without taking a bath on the price.

Wow, thanks for the tip. I wonder if there's a Ruthenium ETF?

I know you were just kidding, but an actual ruthenium ETF would scare the hell out of me. No thanks.

Avalanches always start from the top of the mountain, not the bottom.

You gotta be crazy investing in palladium and rhodium at these levels.


SILVER is where you wanna be... so load up the truck and move to Beverleeee.

One big advantage of silver vs. platinum, palladium and rhodium is the liquidity you would have when trying to sell. Sure, just about everyone knows that, but think about it this way. Platinum, palladium and rhodium are hard enough to sell at record high prices when they get a fair amount of attention. Think about how much harder they would be to sell when the price is in the doldrums and hasn't done much for years. I can think of plenty of coin shops where the dealers just wouldn't touch the stuff (cause they don't want to sit on it for a long time or because they are worried about buying something counterfeit). Anyone who accumulated more than just a few ounces would have a monumental chore on their hands when trying to liquidate for a fair price. I don't see this changing anytime soon. Has anyone here seen anyone liquidate, say, 20 ounces or more at a single time? I haven't. And that is less than 2 pounds!

I'll repeat myself... smelter.

It is hard to imagine taking really exotic stuff like palladium and rhodium to a smelter and getting a decent price. I can't say for sure, but it just seems like you'd take a bath on the price you would realize.

Rather than speculate, I checked a couple of smelters. For .999 gold the price at one was published and is about 94% of spot.

For Pt and Pd, I put in a price request; we'll see if I get a response.

The one place I've checked is buying Pd at 92.5% of spot.

Recyclersteve wrote:It is hard to imagine taking really exotic stuff like palladium and rhodium to a smelter and getting a decent price. I can't say for sure, but it just seems like you'd take a bath on the price you would realize.

Typical refinery payouts for platinum group metals are around 70-90% depending on the amount of material, composition, and percentage of precious metals contained.

68Camaro wrote:The one place I've checked is buying Pd at 92.5% of spot.

That's a really good payout for Pd. What purity do they require the incoming material to be?

I only asked about .999 bullion/ coin

Cu Penny Hoarder wrote:Avalanches always start from the top of the mountain, not the bottom.

You gotta be crazy investing in palladium and rhodium at these levels.

SILVER is where you wanna be... so load up the truck and move to Beverleeee.

Ouch!

https://i1.wp.com/nftrh.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/palladium2.png?ssl=1

Big drop, yep. It's a small market and fluctuates. Only a problem if you bought high and need to sell. Buy low.

Crazy drop. Talk about a speculation bubble! Maybe I shouldn't have said anything?

I sold most of mine last week for $1578/toz. I almost could not have timed it better.

Dr. Cadmium wrote:Crazy drop. Talk about a speculation bubble! Maybe I shouldn't have said anything?

I sold most of mine last week for $1578/toz. I almost could not have timed it better.

Yeah, sure you did... you nailed the top.

You know there were lots of greedy dum-dums that bought at those nose-bleed levels... just people did with blipcoins at 19K.

I was marginally excited when I looked at palladium recently, but I don't have very much, and I've taken more of a hit on platinum which I thought was more likely to have supply constraints a while back due to most of it coming from a single source often in contrast to US interests (Russia). I still need to procure some iridium, gallium (melts in your hand, kinda cool), and rhodium, but that''s not high on my list. Silver is still the hot buy unless you run out of storage space. I'm in it for the long haul, so whatever the price is when I'm ready to retire is what I'll sell it for, but since my tangible position is highly diversified I may sell other things first and gift any losing positions to loved ones.

Look at what Palladium and Rhodium prices did this week. It makes our educated guesses from 10 months ago look foolish. Too bad I don't still have mine!

On the other hand, I'm glad I don't still have it. At this point holding a commodity like that is too anxiety-inducing.

Still have mine, but it is Pt that I consider closer to best value so bought a bit more this past couple of weeks. From some brief discussions at the FUN show it looks like smelter prices at a percent of spot is the practical price for Pd bullion right now. Had a dealer offer me a raw Pd Eagle for $1850 rather than 2100, which is 88% of spot. I passed. There may still be more to go for Pd but I'm not a buyer at these prices.