Until the day we come out with one made out of plutonium we’re pretty confident this will be the most expensive non-precious metal bar we’ll ever offer. Justifying its cost is a little more complex than writing it off as “because it’s rare”.

To be sure, it is pretty damn rare. The US government classifies beryllium a strategic metal and has taken the trouble to stockpile 74 tons of this critical resource. Maybe that sounds like a lot until you consider that a mining truck could carry that in one load with room to spare. More than simply a matter of abundance it’s the gauntlet of steps from bucketfuls of ore to finished product. The extraction is said to be especially difficult and then processing it into a metal is a complicated mess because its dusts are toxic. The number of OSHA rules that need to be observed to make so much as a screw is probably enough to make a grown engineer cry like a baby! Then, as a final insult, beryllium is a real [edit: “female dog”] to work with. It is so hard that it breaks ordinary tools and even hardened steel dies like the one used in the making of this bar wear out quickly.

In sum, we have commissioned just five of these bars with the project’s bill clocking in at several thousand dollars. At a grand each we know that that’s a bank breaker for most collectors but, you know, we just needed the bragging rights of being first to market with a stamped bullion bar of this exotic metal. Mission accomplished :-D