How Rare are Precious Metals?

Have you ever wondered what makes a metal ‘precious’? Is it rarity, value, usefulness? In this blog, we explore the qualities that define precious metals, the world’s rarest metals, and what precious investors should know about the best known precious metals.

What makes a metal precious?

To be classified as precious, a metal needs to pass three key criteria:

1. Naturally occurring metal: Precious metals must be real, naturally occurring elements that come out of the ground. This means that man-made or unstable elements created in a lab don’t count, even if they seem rare or exotic.
2. Genuine rarity: Precious metals must be rare and exist only in relatively small quantities in the Earth’s crust. This means that abundant metals, like copper or iron, are too common to be considered precious. Interestingly, aluminium was once so hard to refine that it was treated like a precious metal. When technology advanced and made it easy to produce, it lost its ‘precious’ status.
3. It holds real value: Even if a metal is rare, it won’t be considered precious unless it holds economic or cultural value. For example, gold and silver have always been prized for money, jewellery, and art, and metals like platinum and palladium have high industrial demand.

So, to be considered precious, a metal must be natural, rare, and valuable. But even within this criteria, some precious metals are more valued than others.

For example, gold’s rarity and usefulness makes it more expensive than other precious metals. Silver is less rare, but has industrial demand that keeps it precious. Then there are ultra-rare metals, like rhodium, iridium, and ruthenium, which are much scarcer than gold or platinum, but also less expensive since they have limited uses.

What are the rarest metals?

The rarest and least abundant metals are gold, platinum, osmium, iridium, palladium, ruthenium, rhodium, tellurium, and rhenium. Let’s take a look at some of these precious metals in more detail.

Rhodium

Rhodium is extremely scarce and difficult to mine, making it the rarest metal on Earth. It’s also significantly more expensive than gold, currently trading at $7,400 per troy ounce as of August 2025.

The metal is shiny, reflective, and has a high melting point, making it useful in catalytic converters, jewellery, and mirrors. Most of the world’s rhodium supply comes from South Africa and Russia, and its prices can fluctuate dramatically with changes in demand.

Osmium

Osmium is one of the world’s most valuable metals and the densest natural element. It’s a tough, brittle metal with a blue-gray tint and a density that makes it extremely difficult to extract. Osmium is used to strengthen metal alloys and in aerospace applications, fountain pen tips, and electrical contacts. Most deposits are found in South Africa, North America, and Russia.

Iridium

Iridium is hard and resilient, able to withstand heat and corrosion better than most metals. It’s silvery-white and, thanks to its durability, has important uses in spark plugs, medical implants, and aerospace equipment. Iridium is found mostly in South Africa and Russia, and has been linked to the asteroid impact that ended the age of dinosaurs.

Platinum

Platinum is one of the most recognised precious metals compared to other metals on this list. It’s a rare, silver-white metal that’s corrosion-resistant and soft enough to shape, making it highly desirable in jewellery. Platinum also has high demand in the automotive industry for its use in catalytic converters. It’s mostly found in South Africa, Russia, and Canada.

Palladium

Palladium isn’t as well-known as platinum, but it has become more valuable in recent years due to its role in electronics and hydrogen storage. Like platinum, it's also used in catalytic converters, as well as dentistry and watch making. Palladium is lightweight and found mostly in South Africa, Russia, and Canada.

Gold

Gold barely needs an introduction. The yellow precious metal has been a symbol of wealth for thousands of years and is used in jewellery, investments, and thanks to its conductivity, in medical devices, electronics, and even some space technology. The world’s largest gold producers include China, Australia, and Russia.

Read: How is Gold Formed and Where Does it Come From?

Silver

Another metal that needs no introduction, silver is less rare than gold but has higher industrial demand. Its high conductivity and reflectivity make it useful for electronics, solar panels, mirrors, and medical technology, and it’s also widely used in jewellery and investments. Major silver producing countries include Mexico, Peru, and China.

Ruthenium

Ruthenium is a lesser-known metal that’s part of the platinum group metals. It’s corrosion-resistant and used to strengthen alloys, often mixed with platinum and palladium to improve durability. Ruthenium also has important uses in electronics and chemical catalysts. Most of the world’s ruthenium supply comes from Russia, South Africa, and Canada.

What to know about investing in precious metals

Being rare and valuable makes precious metals a popular investment vehicle, and the four most widely-traded precious metals are gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. Here’s what to know about investing in each of these metals.

Gold

Gold is known for its durability, which makes it resistant to corrosion, and its malleability, which makes it easy to shape. It’s also an excellent conductor of heat and electricity, making it useful in industrial applications such as electronics and dentistry. But, of course, rare gold is best known for its use in jewellery and as a store of wealth in the form of gold bullion coins and bars.

The gold market trades 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and gold’s spot price often reflects investor sentiment on top of supply and demand. This is because there’s a lot more above-ground, hoarded gold compared to new mining supply, so gold price movements are more based on whether people are buying and selling what’s already in circulation. In other words, if people are selling gold, its price decreases, and if people are buying gold, its prices increase.

Gold demand often increases during periods of economic or geopolitical uncertainty. Investors buy gold when the financial system seems unstable, during periods of war and political unrest, and to protect purchasing power during periods of inflation.

Read More: Is gold a good investment?

Silver

Silver is a precious metal and an industrial metal. Silver prices can be more volatile than gold’s, since it’s also influenced by industrial demand.

For example, silver once played an important role in the photography industry, but demand for it dropped once digital cameras took over. On the other hand, it’s now widely used in electronics, medical devices, batteries, superconductors, and solar panels, making it a desired commodity so long as these industrial applications remain relevant.

Keep Reading: Why You Should Consider Silver Investment

Platinum

Platinum is much rarer than gold and often costs more per troy ounce during periods of political and financial stability. Like silver, it's heavily tied to industrial use with the largest platinum demand coming from catalytic converters used in cars. It’s also widely used in jewellery, petroleum/chemical refining, and computer components.

One of the main influences on platinum prices is geopolitics, with its mines heavily concentrated in South Africa and Russia. The other major influence is car sales and autocatalyst demand – for example, reduced demand for autocatalysts during the pandemic pushed platinum prices down, although they later rebounded. These factors make platinum the most volatile of the precious metals.

See: How to Invest in Platinum: Tips & Strategies

Palladium

Palladium is perhaps the least well known of the four precious metals in this list, but it’s a very useful industrial metal. Like platinum, palladium is used in catalytic converters, which account for about 80% of its demand. It’s also used in electronics, dentistry, jewellery, and hydrogen fuel cells.

Most of the world’s palladium supply comes from the United States, Russia, South Africa, and Canada. Its scarcity, coupled with rising demand for clean energy and electric vehicles, has pushed palladium prices up in recent years.

Learn More: How to Invest in Palladium

How much gold, silver, and platinum exists on Earth?

One of the main classifiers of a precious metal is its rarity, or how much of it exists in the Earth’s crust (the outermost layer). There might be more of these metals hidden in our planet’s deeper mantle and molten core, but we’re unlikely to ever reach these regions anytime soon so it’s not really worth accounting for.

Scientists measure a metal’s rarity using something called a ‘mass fraction’, which is how many kilograms of a metal exist per billion kilograms of crust material. By that measure:

• Gold: 4 parts per billion
• Silver: 75 parts per billion
• Platinum: 5 parts per billion.

To put this all into perspective, Earth’s crust has an estimated total mass of 2.6 x 1022 kilograms. That means, in theory, there’s around 400 billion kilograms of gold spread across the crust.

Most of this will never be mined, but the numbers show that even ‘rare’ metals exist in absolute massive amounts. It’s just that they’re thinly scattered, making it difficult and sometimes not commercially viable to extract it all.

How much gold has been mined so far?

Each year, about 1.5 million kilograms of new gold is mined worldwide. That’s enough gold to form a solid cube that’s just over four metres on each side.

It’s estimated that around 10 billion troy ounces of gold have been mined throughout human history, or just over 311 million kilograms. That’s enough to form a cube of pure gold around 25 metres on each side.

To put it another way, the largest ship ever built, the Seawise Giant, had a cargo capacity of 657 million kilograms. That ship could’ve carried twice the total amount of gold that humanity has produced over thousands of years.

Invest in precious metals today

Rarity, enduring value, cultural significance, and industrial demand all make precious metals popular investments. If you’d like to invest in the timeless appeal of precious metal bullion, you’re in the right place.

At StoneX Bullion, we offer a wide range of investment-grade gold, silver, platinum, and palladium bullion bars and coins from the world’s most respected mints and refineries. Whether you're seeking a reliable hedge against inflation or a tangible asset to preserve your wealth for future generations, you’ll find an option to suit your needs.

Browse our collection now and start building your precious metals portfolio.