Iridium Calculator – Calculate the Current Iridium Value
Material Value · Iridium
235.96 £
1.00 g × 1 × 235.9608 £/g = 235.96 £
Buy-back price: The amount a dealer or refinery actually pays. This is typically 2–10% below the melt value, as processing costs and margin are deducted.
The densest metal on this page
Iridium has a density of 22.56 grams per cubic centimetre. Gold is at 19.32, platinum at 21.45, silver at 10.49 — so for the same volume, a piece of iridium weighs roughly one sixth more than gold and more than twice as much as silver. Only osmium is denser.
For the calculation, this means a small sample puts more weight on the scale than it looks like it should. If you want to infer weight from volume, you need the density — and if you want to check a piece the other way round, you can use it as a sign of authenticity, because a piece that is too light is made of something else.
The high density is no coincidence but related to the metal's other properties: iridium is exceptionally hard, melts only above 2,400 degrees Celsius and withstands acids that attack other metals. It is precisely this combination that makes it industrially valuable — and hard to work.
Spark plugs, crucibles, electrodes
The most likely everyday encounter with iridium is a spark plug. Iridium spark plugs have an electrode tip made of the metal because it can be made very thin without burning away: a fine tip needs less ignition voltage, and iridium withstands the load. The amount per plug is tiny — a fraction of a gram.
Technically more important are crucibles. To grow crystals, for example sapphire for LED substrates, you need a vessel that keeps its shape well above 2,000 degrees and does not contaminate the melt. Iridium crucibles do that, and they are the largest single use.
Added to this are applications where durability matters: electrodes for chlor-alkali electrolysis, contacts, spark plugs in aircraft turbines, containers for radioactive heat sources in space probes. What links all of these is not lustre but durability.
A very small market
Iridium occurs as a by-product of platinum mining, mainly in South Africa. Annual production is tiny compared with gold or silver, and it cannot be increased deliberately — there is only more iridium if more platinum is mined.
A market of this size reacts sharply. A few deals are enough to move the quote, and because iridium is not traded on any exchange, there is no continuous price to cushion this: the price is a dealer quote, set once on a working day. Long periods without change are therefore followed by individual days with sharp jumps.
The value this calculator gives is the material value at that quote. What a buyer pays is lower, and in such a narrow market the spread is wider than for the common precious metals.