Palladium Calculator – Work Out the Current Palladium Value
Material Value · Palladium
24.63 £
1.00 g × 1 × 24.6291 £/g = 24.63 £
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.
Palladium in jewellery – visible and invisible
As a jewellery metal in its own right, palladium is usually worked as a 950 alloy, hallmarked "Pd950". It is naturally white and, unlike white gold, does not need rhodium plating – a coating that wears away over the years and has to be renewed.
The quantity hidden in white gold is far larger. There, palladium serves as a decolouriser: it takes the yellow tone out of the gold. A 750 white gold ring can therefore contain several per cent palladium – but for the material value it is the gold content that counts, and the gold calculator is the right tool for that.
Besides 950, the calculator also includes a 500 alloy, because it occurs in the trade, as well as fine palladium at 999 and 999.5 parts per thousand for bars and investment coins.
The difference from platinum is weight
Platinum and palladium look almost identical in jewellery, and chemically they are closely related. In weight they are worlds apart: platinum has 21.45 g/cm³, palladium 12.02. The same ring therefore weighs almost twice as much in platinum.
That is why a comparison by price per gram alone is useless. If palladium is cheaper per gram than platinum, that does not mean the finished piece of jewellery is correspondingly cheaper – it simply contains less metal.
In industry, by contrast, interchangeability is real: in the car catalytic converter both partly perform the same task, and manufacturers switch when one becomes too expensive. The platinum/palladium ratio shows how strong this pressure currently is.
Value-added tax and buy-back
Palladium is not exempt from value-added tax in the United Kingdom – only investment gold is. When you buy, 20 per cent is charged, which does not come back when you sell.
The palladium market is smaller than that for gold or silver, and this shows in the spread between buying and selling prices. For palladium it is usually wider.
The value shown is therefore the material value at the exchange price, not a dealer's offer. Before selling, it is worth comparing several buyers.