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Welcome back, Doug! Although I am distressed to hear that you got irradiated, if you have made a big advance, well that is likely well worth it (taking a longer view, betterment of our world and all).
Too bad there will not be any "Little Dougs" to help our world be even better, raise the quality of the gene pool and all... (Some of you know that our daughter will get married next May..., Little Grandkid Bearings?)
:clap:
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Yes, I will let you all know about the iridium upon arrival. Apparently it will be in powder form (60 mesh, so, what about 1/60th of an inch sized particles and smaller?), packed in a sealed container -- so I cannot open it and look at it or play with it should I want to sell it back (which I won't do). They DO sell it in smaller amounts, but the guy is on vacation, so I have no other details yet. He mentioned in an email that the per gram price would be higher (and that he would not take it back). But, a small amount of Ir would then allow me to re-think an idea that
Doug already knows about.
The world demand for iridium is about 198,000 oz / year I read recently. (Sadly that is TOO MUCH use for us "pmbug-ers" to get together and monopolize.) Which is about 10 times the demand for similar (heavy) osmium -- the latter has a mild toxicity problem in osmium tetraoxide form. Osmium is the rarest of the stable elements, also the heaviest stable element.
There is another company that sells Os, Ru, W, Mo, and Re (maybe one or so others I have forgotten) in one toz sizes, with the chemical symbol, purity and mint name. They do not have iridium yet, but they say it is coming soon. Their prices are generally lower than
elementsales.com, and since they mark their pieces of metal, I think that would be useful for collectors (or punters...).
Rhodium (Rh, Baird Mint) bars can be bought at
kitco.com.
Ruthenium and rhodium would complete my platinum-group metals collection, so yeah, I will likely finish by buying those last two. It would make a nice picture at a blog article...
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I have not contacted these guys, who are in the UK and "big" (relatively speaking) in rhenium (Re) and maybe ruthenium:
www.lipmann.co.uk
Rhenium, "almost" a platinum-group metal (white, very dense (about the same as platinum), located just "east" of osmium on the Periodic Chart) appears to be one Lipmann's fortés, apparently Re will be (may already be) used in jet-engine turbine blades (part of a superalloy). Ruthenium may be used as well in the NEXT generation of turbine blades along with Re. Details at the above site, look around.
Lipmann also deals in some other "minor metals", not many rare-earths though. Many of the rare-earths, in pure metal form are not chemically stable (frown), so are not good candidates for
wankers (is that a word from the UK?) to buy and hold as a possible "investment".