What has plagued us in chemistry class and yet is still relatively unknown?

Who has also had to struggle through the periodic table a time or two in their school days. But if you now look at the individual elements as an investment opportunity, it may not be quite so bad anymore. And what is especially important here is the fact that the elements, as their position in the periodic table proves, are not chemically producible, i.e. they occur in limited amounts. 

Osmium, with atomic number 76, is rather further back in the periodic table. Much more exciting, however, is the increase in value in recent years. On May 1, 2017, the selling price was €801.59 per gram, today we are already at €1,874.89. Considering that osmium is the rarest metal, however, this is of course not particularly surprising. To be more precise, osmium is about 30 times more valuable than gold. In our last article, we already jokingly pointed out that osmium looks like fairy dust. Here you have some pictures at a glance of what osmium looks like as a finished product in crystal form. I would say that when you look at it, it has to make you happy just because it sparkles so much. And as a cool sidefact: The surface of crystalline Osium, that is, as you can buy it as an investor, is so unique that it can be matched 10,000 times more accurately than a fingerprint, so counterfeiting is almost impossible.

But how does the osmium actually get to my trader?

In the meantime there are some traders who have specialized in the distribution of osmium, among others the GOLDINVEST Edelmetalle GmbH in Vienna. But when the osmium lands in the vault there, it has already made a long journey. For one thing, as already mentioned, osmium is incredibly rare. According to current projections, there are about 9 m3 in existence, but only 2 m3 of that is likely to be mined. Osmium is therefore still quite unknown as an investment opportunity to some extent because it only had its official launch in 2014. Among other reasons, that may be because it is actually a byproduct in platinum ore and is actually extracted when mining other precious metals such as gold. And the ratio of platinum ore to osmium is not particularly high-yielding, so it takes about 320 tons of platinum ore to get 1g of osmium. After extraction from the platinum ore, it exists as a powder, but is not yet really useful as an investment, apart from the fact that it is also toxic in this state. In the laboratory, the powder is then crystallized in nearly 200 individual steps. During this process, osmium loses its toxicity. Afterwards, the crystals are given an official certificate so that they can then be put on the market.

So much for the basics. Since osmium is predicted to have a prosperous future in the precious metals industry, this will certainly not be our last article on this topic. We are really excited to see what else will happen here.