Ruthenium Metal. 1 toz (31g) Arc Melted Ingot of Sexy and Mysterious Ruthenium!

Description

This listing is for a one troy ounce (31.1 gram) ingot of ruthenium metal.
I have a hard time selling ruthenium, and I think I know why. Somewhere along the line someone described ruthenium as a drab, silver-gray metal, and the description stuck. Maybe this person was drunk, or had a bad childhood experience with ruthenium, or maybe they got ruthenium mixed up with palladium (which really is drab), but for whatever reason you can find the "ruthenium-is-a-dull-silver-gray-metal" libel repeated everywhere. So of course it's a tough sell. Why would anyone want to buy or even look at such a dull metal? But if you are one of the few people who has actually seen and handled ruthenium you will know how absurd this stigma of drabness is. Ruthenium is beautiful, probably the most beautiful of the platinum group elements, a brilliant and almost liquid silver-white with half glimpsed flashes of pink and green. In a word, ruthenium is sexy.
This is a fine specimen of a metal that is almost never available in fused ingot form.
Ruthenium is the lightest member of the platinum group of metals (PGMs), six chemically similar precious metals that sit together on the periodic table. The other five PGMs are  platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, and osmium. Ruthenium lies below iron and above osmium on the periodic table, and has chemical similarities to both.
Like all platinum group metals, ruthenium is quite rare, with total worldwide annual production of only about 35 tons, 100 times less than annual gold production. Ruthenium is used as a catalyst, in magnetic memory devices, in super-hard alloys with other platinum group metals, and in a growing number of other applications, including in fuel cells.
Ruthenium generally is traded as a fine powder. Unlike platinum, palladium, and rhodium, ruthenium is rarely available as ingots of fused metal. Although solid ingots of ruthenium made of sintered powder are available, the complex and pearlescent luster of this metal can be fully appreciated only in arc melted pieces, such that offered here.
Historically ruthenium has been the least the expensive PGM.
However, like the other PGMs, ruthenium is a sleeper prone to occasional large spikes in price. Take a look at the price history of rhodium and you'll see what I mean. Spurred by potential applications in
fuel cells and other technologies the
wholesale
price of ruthenium has risen from under 0 to over 0/oz in the past few months.