Meet rhenium, the precious metal no one ever told you about. Ranking as possibly the rarest of all the stable elements, rhenium was the last non-radioactive element to be discovered, in 1925, and remains to this day largely unknown to the wider public. Due to an extremely high melting point it can’t be cast into molds and is far too hard and brittle to be formed, or even machined, into a finished shape. It is nonetheless extremely resistant to corrosion - as is common of all precious metals with the exception of silver. Given these two characteristics it has long been used wherever engine parts get white hot, such as jet engines and rocket nozzles, and its use would be far wider if it wasn’t so dense (which adds weight) nor was so rare (which adds cost).

With the demand in rare metals jumping so dramatically over the last couple of decades there’s little doubt that engineers and rocket scientists should be worried that the tiny annual output of rhenium will be overwhelmed from new demand. Meanwhile, those challenges that have been preventing the making of solid rhenium objects is also slowly being overcome with new processes that promise even higher interest in the years to come. To this end, the jewelry world was recently introduced to rings made of pure rhenium and elsewhere on this site our rhenium bullion bars literally cannot be kept in stock. All this despite our insignificantly small commercial footprint in e-commerce as a whole. What will happen when larger companies take notice?

Get your sample of rhenium while it’s still cheap.