Gold Price Hits Record High, but Not All That Glitters Is Gold. Top 5 Most Valuable Precious Metals.

Krommenhoek Metals has extensive expertise in recyclingused catalytic convertersand discarded electronics, such asold computers. We process a large quantity of precious metals each year. We’d like to take a look at the five most valuable precious metals in the world right now.

Ask people about expensive precious metals, and gold and silver are often the first to come to mind. When they think about it a little more, platinum comes to mind for some of them.

To get right to the point, if we look at value, silver is clearly at the bottom of this list. But gold isn’t such a bad idea: over time, it has regularly been the most expensive tradable precious metal. Prices do fluctuate frequently, and gold does sometimes lose out—sometimes to platinum, other times to palladium.

Traditionally, investors view gold as a safe haven for their assets, especially in uncertain times. The current coronavirus crisis is no exception. At the moment, gold is once again proving its value by rising to unprecedented heights. Before the outbreak of the global pandemic, the price of gold stood at €44 per gram. As of this writing, it has already surpassed the €50 per gram mark—the highest price ever recorded for gold.

In fact, fluctuations in the value of precious metals are usually related to industrial applications in many cases.
Furthermore, their use in automotive catalytic converters and in printed circuit boards for computers and servers plays a major role. Thanks to the rapid advancement of technology, printed circuit boards do contain fewer and fewer precious metals. However, because global sales of printed circuit boards are still growing, more precious metals are needed nonetheless.
Another factor that should not be underestimated is the rising demand for jewelry. We see this particularly in countries with very large populations where average incomes are rising sharply, such as China and India. The share of global demand for precious metals accounted for by jewelry is significant and continues to grow.

The precious metal that currently holds the highest value is somewhat less well-known to many people. Thanks mainly to its use in automotive catalytic converters, rhodium is currently number one. Although it is actually something of an outlier. It is so rare, in fact, that it cannot be traded in the usual way. This also applies to a number of other “exotic” precious metals, so we’ll limit ourselves here to the more common types.

Still, we do want to include rhodium—as an exception. It is, in fact, possible to invest in it indirectly through exchange-traded certificates. This allows us to compare its value effectively with the other four. And when we do, this precious metal clearly stands out. To give you an idea: until recently, it was worth about 4.5 times as much as palladium, which is currently in second place. At the moment, however, that ratio is “only” 2.5 times as much. The COVID-19 crisis appears to be having a significant dampening effect on rhodium’s price trend, which is now stuck at around €200 per gram.

Based on the value at the time of writing, here are our top 5:

1. Rhodium
2. Palladium
3. Gold
4. Platinum
5. Silver