The epitaph reads “Erbium. Fairly useless. Nobody has heard of thee. RIP buddy!”.

This exotic member of metaldom is middle-of-the-pack as far as the lanthanide series goes: about halfway in cost, average in terms of difficulty in machining, so-so in terms of reactivity in air and right about the median for typical ore yields. It ranks, however, down near the bottom alongside lutetium in terms of relevance in the otherwise red-hot market for the rest of the rare earths group. A bit needed for fiber optics, another bit for specialty glasses and the rest might as well be turned into nice looking cubes for nerds who are looking for inordinary desktop gadgets!

Measures 15x8x1mm