Precious Metals

About Precious Metals

Precious Metals have several aspects which make them indeed precious. Some of those aspects are physical and tangible, while others lay rather in human psychology and intangible values. Therefore, let us take a look at what Precious Metals are, what is their value and on how they can be obtained.

Physical value of Precious Metals is based upon their metallic chemical structure and qualities, such as high luster or melting points than of other metals or else Precious Metals are less reactive, compared to other elements. Of course, all such physical Precious Metals qualities make them excellent and indeed precious feed stock for various industrial companies. Nevertheless, some Precious Metals, such as gold or silver are more known for their usage in art, jewelry, collectible and financial investments.

There are several groups of Precious Metals: gold, silver, platinum and palladium. Platinum group includes such Precious Metals as ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium and platinum. Besides, there is rhenium precious metal, which is not included neither in platinum nor any other precious metal group. Most of the Precious Metals are measured and priced by troy ounce. However, because such metals as gold, for instance, do not exist per se and must have certain even small measure of alloy in them, some countries include this alloy into the weight of the troy ounce, while others do not do that. Thus, their gold Precious Metals troy ounce is a little bit heavier, for it contains of an ounce of pure gold plus alloy.

Precious Metals Costs

Now, as to the Precious Metals costs, one has to be aware, that those prices are not fixed and they can rapidly change, depending on the market condition, on new discoveries in the area of metal science or on discoveries of new minefields. The most commonly purchased precious metal is gold. Thus, the prices of other Precious Metals are often times compared and measured against its price. May 2007 the price per troy ounce of gold was $689 USD. The prices for such Precious Metals as palladium, iridium or osmium come up to half the price of gold. The most precious of all the Precious Metals is rhodium. It is 8 times more expensive than gold and about 4 time more expensive than platinum. In fact, platinum is the second most expensive precious metal and its price is usually twice higher than that of gold. Finally, the least expensive of the Precious Metals is silver. Its price makes only 1/50^th of the gold price. Even though silver has all of the physical characteristics of Precious Metals, it is not so rare and its role of a precious metal is more related to its role as one of the main coinage and jewelry metals.

As I have already mentioned, such Precious Metals as gold, silver and platinum are often times used in art, coinage or jewelry, all those metals can also be sold in bulk. In fact, most Precious Metals investment advisers consider bulk or so called bullion purchase of the Precious Metals the best way for investing in them. For, in bulk Precious Metals are the cheapest to purchase. Now, bulk Precious Metals can be sold in ingots or coins and their valued is determined by the mass and purity of the metal, rather than by the face value, as it is with money. South African Krugerrand is considered to be the most famous of the bulk gold coins. However, many other countries, such as USA for instance, also melt their own coins. Some of such gold and especially silver coins besides their actual mass and purity value can represent numismatic value as well. As to the purity of such Precious Metals coins, the purest gold coins are melted by Canada and are called Canadian Gold Maple Leaf. Their purity comes up to 99,999 percents of gold. For, as I have mentioned before gold is found in nature as pure substance. Thus, a small amount of alloy is inevitable.  

As to the sizes of gold bullion coins, one of the largest bullions ever melted is coin 10.000 dollar Australian Gold Nugget. It was melted in Australia of 99.9 percents pure gold and its weight is 1 kilogram of gold. However, such large bullion coins are quite expensive and hard to handle. Therefore, only few other countries have melted them, but only in very small quantities. Among the golden bullion record breakers there are 8 kg Chinese gold coin and 31 kg Australian gold coin.

That was some general information on Precious Metals and gold bullion coins in particular.

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