I visited a friend recently that uses Indium as part of an industrial application. I read that it isn't as rare as silver, yet it is worth slightly more because of the cost associated with complex production. Leaching from slag and dust of zinc production and electrolytic refining. This is an amazing metal, Silver like lustre yet as soft as green clay. You can cut it with a bread knife. My friend paid about $500 a kg for it two years ago. These days it sells for around $1000 per kg. Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Indium.jpg
You can pick up a kg for about 650 USD. http://www.rotometals.com/Indium-Ingot-s/7.htm A fellow stacker on here once gave me a run down on how to break down a kg and cast them into 1oz bars. This can be done safely in a home kitchen. Its more abundant than Silver though but harder to extract.
That site recommended by others here also has kilo bars of germanium - used in fibreoptics...perhaps a good investment idea if Julia G gets her way with the NBN. At least some good may come of it.
Wow I thought the same about getting some except its over the 1k gst limit. Its an ingredient of Argentium silver also hence my interest in my slowly developing interest in silver jewelry making and sculpture. I'm seriously considering a 1kg block of indium though.
That would be great if you did. There doesn't seem to be many known jewellers here as of yet & a thread or two on jewelling with PMs would be a fine addition to the site. I don't know much about Argentium other than the addition of germanium reduces tarnish on silver. I've read that the known supplies of germanium might run dry in 40 years. If I can find the graph I had which had an estimated time line of all metals, I'll post it here.
I found the parent site I think, which estimates when various metals run out... Here is indium: http://terresacree.org/indiumanglais.htm
that's a bit hard on the eye, but you can see it in all its glory here: http://environment.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2605/26051202.jpg
you can get a bar chart of various resources here (same site): http://terresacree.org/ressourcesanglais.htm#bas
Thats a great graph millededge! il be printing it off at work on thu ( in color if bosses aint around ) cant wait to breath in the information on it without straining my eyes.,
I've been thinking about indium for ages but I feel that I need to make progress in other adventures before I start a journey into indium investing. "the march of progress" =_=
I once asked a particular company which advertised buying/selling indium, and the reply was a figure less than 50% of the sell value. I later thought "if you embark on this adventure one day, you gotta make sure you do something about the market first".
Speaking of rare earth metals I decided to take a look around at the prices on the market and I was very surprised to see that Neodymium has risen a few thousand percent in prices... But then again that stuff is quite hard to store what with toxic dust and what not. These could be the next big thing
