It’s been a wild ride for precious metals in 2025. Gold prices just broke a whopping $4,200/oz, and silver recently hit $50/oz for the first time ever. While gold and silver steal the headlines, palladium has been quietly climbing – up over 30% in just the past month. Let’s take a closer look at this lesser-known yet highly valuable metal.
What Makes Palladium Valuable?
Scarcity
Palladium is much rarer than gold or platinum in the Earth’s crust. It’s mostly mined as a byproduct of platinum and nickel, meaning supply can’t quickly or easily adjust when demand rises.
Unique Properties
Palladium boasts a remarkable set of traits that make it useful across industries:
- Excellent electrical conductivity
- Biocompatible and hypoallergenic
- Strong, durable, and resistant to corrosion
- Can absorb large amounts of hydrogen, enabling advanced applications like fuel cells
Role in Clean Energy
Palladium is essential for technologies that reduce pollution and power clean energy, including hydrogen fuel cells. As more countries tighten emissions standards and pursue renewable energy, palladium’s role in the green energy transition is expected to grow.
What Drives Palladium Prices?
Like other precious metals, are influenced by supply and demand, with a heavy reliance on the automotive industry – over 80% of palladium goes into catalytic converters for gasoline-powered vehicles.
That said, as electric vehicles grow in popularity, demand could shift – though gasoline cars will still need palladium for years. Automakers sometimes swap palladium and platinum depending on relative prices, creating shifts in demand.
Who Discovered Palladium?
Believe it or not, palladium was discovered by accident! The metal was first identified in 1802 by an English chemist named William Hyde Wollaston. While purifying platinum using acids, palladium appeared as a residue. Initially, Wollaston sold it anonymously as “new silver.”
Palladium first saw medical use in palladium chloride treatments for tuberculosis, though adverse side effects ended that application. Its modern resurgence came with automobile catalytic converters in the late 1900s.
Palladium’s Uses Today
Automotive Industry
Today, about 85% of palladium goes into catalytic converters, usually mixed with platinum and rhodium. These metals help convert harmful gases like carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and hydrocarbons into less harmful substances.
PGMs became common in catalytic converters in the mid-1970s, following stricter emission regulations. Before that, cars emitted far more pollutants, contributing to urban smog and respiratory illnesses.
Electronics
Palladium is used in electronic components because of its excellent conductivity and resistance to corrosion. It appears in multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs), connectors, switches, and sensors – critical for computers, smartphones, and medical devices.
Medical and Dental Applications
- Dental alloys: Crowns, bridges, and inlays often contain palladium.
- Surgical instruments and implants: Durable and biocompatible, ideal for repeated sterilization.
- Pharmaceuticals: Used as a catalyst in chemical reactions.
Jewelry
Palladium is prized for its bright white color, lightweight feel, and hypoallergenic properties. High-quality jewelry typically contains 95% palladium and 5% ruthenium (PD950), marked for authenticity.
Investment
Palladium is also traded as coins, bars, and ETFs, offering investors a way to diversify their portfolios beyond gold and silver.
Where is Palladium Found?
Almost 80% of the world’s palladium is produced in either Russia or South Africa. This means that any mining disruptions, labor strikes, or geopolitical tensions can sharply reduce supply and cause price spikes.
Other producers include Canada, Zimbabwe, and the United States. Montana’s Stillwater Mine is the only place in the U.S. that produces both palladium and platinum.
How Does Palladium Recycling Work?
Recycling is crucial due to palladium’s rarity and concentrated supply. Precious metals like palladium require special equipment and expertise to be properly recycled. Precious metal refineries like Garfield take scrap palladium and melt it down, separating the pure palladium from the rest of the material (which is often cheaper base metals). The purified palladium is then cast into bars and reintroduced to the metals market, where manufacturers use it to create new products. This cycle can repeat indefinitely.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the United States recovered about 42,000 kg of palladium from automobile catalytic converters alone.
Selling Palladium Scrap
If you have palladium scrap that you’re looking to monetize, look no further than Garfield Refining. Our award-winning refinery has been delivering top payouts and exceptional service since 1892.
We also offer the option to trade your scrap for palladium coins. You can either buy bullion outright or accept it as full or partial payment for your scrap value. Call us today at 800-923-0968 to learn more!
Ready to sell your palladium, gold, silver or platinum scrap? Get started today with a prepaid shipping label!