Rhodium Calculator – Work Out the Current Rhodium Value
Material Value · Rhodium
221.51 £
1.00 g × 1 × 221.5141 £/g = 221.51 £
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.
Rhodium plating – the layer on your white gold
White gold is not naturally white but pale yellow to greyish yellow. It gets its brilliant light tone from an electroplated rhodium layer applied after polishing. The same goes for some silver jewellery, where the layer additionally prevents tarnishing.
This layer is extremely thin – it is measured in micrometres, that is, in thousandths of a millimetre. For the material value it is therefore irrelevant: the rhodium on a ring weighs so little that it cannot sensibly be quantified. Anyone who wants to know the value of a rhodium-plated white gold ring calculates with the gold calculator and the gold content.
The layer is nevertheless practically relevant, just differently: it wears away over the years, first in places with friction. A white gold ring that shows yellowish through is not damaged – it needs re-plating with rhodium, a routine job for the goldsmith.
Why the price stands still for days and then jumps
Rhodium is not traded on any exchange. There is no fixing as for gold and silver, no futures market and no continuous price. The price arises as a quotation from individual dealers, who set it once per working day.
This visibly shapes the price series: several unchanged days are often followed by a single one with a jump of several per cent. With gold such a pattern would be conspicuous; here it is normal – the dealer simply had no reason to change their quotation. In the performance calendar this shows up as a series of grey cells.
How far this can go is shown by our own series: it begins in September 2019 at around 4,500 dollars per ounce, reaches almost 30,000 in 2021 and then falls back just as quickly. In a liquid market with many participants such a movement would hardly be possible; here a few trades are enough to shift the quotation.
What this calculator cannot do
The most common reason to ask about the rhodium value is a car catalytic converter. This calculator is not suitable for that, and that is not the calculator's fault: in a catalytic converter, platinum, palladium and rhodium sit in very small quantities on a ceramic substrate, and exactly how much depends on the vehicle type, the year of manufacture and the emissions standard.
Without an analysis of the material the weight cannot be determined. An estimated number of grams would not be a basis for calculation but an invented number with the appearance of a measurement – which is why we give none here. Buyers of catalytic converters work with vehicle databases and sample analyses; that is the route to a reliable figure.
The calculator is useful for fine rhodium that exists as such: bars and granules of stated fineness, as offered by some refiners. There you know the weight, and the calculation works out.