Palladium is making a huge run in the jewelry industry right now. It has become the go to metal for ladies wanting a bright white metal without the potential need for rhodium plating or the expense of platinum. Both are legitimate reasons to love palladium.However, in the rush to embrace this “new” metal I think that a lot of it’s negatives are being overlooked. And while I do make rings in palladium, am perfectly happy to work in nearly any metal that our customers may want to use (gold, platinum, palladium, stainless steel, tungsten, whatever), and am comfortable working in the metal, I wanted to get my opinions on palladium out in the big wide world.

Let me find my boy Sherman so we can take a short trip back in time.

A little palladium history

White gold made it’s first appearance in 1912 as an alternative to platinum and silver. Palladium made it’s first real appearance during World War II. Up to this point platinum and silver had been the metal of choice for most white jewelry. In World War II gold and platinum were declared strategic resources and became all but unavailable to the average consumer. Enter palladium.

With no real strategic use palladium stepped up to take it’s place in the jewelry industry. With the end of the war came the end of palladium as a jewelry metal. But the door had been opened, and like most things, once discovered they tend to keep coming back.

Palladium made it’s second appearance in the jewelry world in the 1970s. With the oil crisis and general recession in the economy palladium found it’s way back on to the shelves of jewelers all over the country. Once again it didn’t last long. With the coming of the 1980s and the era of Reaganomics (let his name be praised) palladium fell out of fashion again as the cheap, hard to work with metal and was replaced again by more traditional metals.

This leads us to current days where palladium is making huge inroads in the industry again. At first it was all about price. But as some of the issues involved in making palladium jewelry are finally addressed it has become easier to work with it may actually stick this time. But I’m not counting on it.

What is palladium?

Let’s take a moment to get a little technical.

Palladium is a member of the platinum family group of metals. This family also include Osmium, Rhodium, iridium, and ruthenium. If you take a look at the periodic table here, you will also notice that silver and gold are right next to the platinum metal group.

• Melting Point: 2830.82 °F (gold melts at 1947.52 °F / platinum melts at 3214.9 °F)
• Mohs Hardness: 4.75 (gold 2.5 / platinum 4 to 4.5)
• Vickers Hardness: 461 MPa (gold 216 MPa / platinum 549 MPa)

Right now more than half of all palladium production goes directly in to catalytic converters for the auto industry.

The economics of palladium

Palladium’s primary selling point, right now, is that it is so much cheaper than platinum. But this wasn’t always the case. There was a time when palladium was more expensive than platinum. But for the last five years platinum has been significantly more expensive that palladium. Let’s take a look at the growth rates. (source http://www.kitco.com/)

5 year growth:

• Palladium: low $146.00 - high $579.00 / 396% growth
• Platinum: low $602.00 - high $2252.00 / 374% growth
• Gold: low $322.10 - high $1002.80 / 311% growth

1 year growth:

• Palladium: low 317.00 - high $579.00 / 183%
• Gold: low $641.80 - high $1002.80 /156%
• Platinum: low $1225.00 - high $2252.00 / 139%

30 day growth:

• Palladium: low $425.00 - high $588.00 / 138%
• Platinum: low $1823.00 - high $2276.00 / 124%
• Gold: low $910.10 - high $1023.50 / 112%

So why am I showing you this? Simple, palladium’s #1 claim to fame right now is price. If history continues and we see it continue to outgrow platinum and gold it won’t have that to fall back on. Right now palladium is being sold at the same price as 18kt white gold in most places. I know that many will be bumping that price up to somewhere between 18kt white gold and platinum to compensate for its continued out gaining of gold and platinum.

Technical issues with palladium

Casting

My biggest issue with palladium came when people started using it as an alloy for making white gold. If you noticed earlier, palladium melts at 900 °F higher than gold does (and 200 °F higher than nickel). One of the first things I was taught when learning to cast gold was to be careful to not get the gold too hot because you run a serious risk of damaging, or burning, the gold and introducing casting and finishing problems.

Add to this the fact that many casters, especially small operations, don’t adjust their procedures as well as they should and you end up with castings where the metal wasn’t gotten quite hot enough and you end up with a blotchy casting that needs plating to hide it. A plating process that palladium is supposed to help you not need.

Repair

As much as it pains me to say this, jewelers are notorious for not keeping up with technology and change. And this leads to all sorts of problems with simple repairs like sizing a ring. Palladium isn’t like gold or platinum, or even sterling silver. Yet a vast number of jewelers treat it as if it were.

The biggest problem with palladium when doing a repair is temperature control. If it gets too hot it can develop a series of spider web like micro cracks and can even become brittle. The same thing happens when casting palladium, temperature control is incredibly important.

Palladium also work hardens far more than gold or platinum. As a metal is bent, hammered, or even experiences normal daily wear, it’s surface hardens over time from the repeated impacts. This is great because it reduces the amount of scratching and wear that the ring will exhibit over time. It’s not so great if you decide to change a stone later, lose a stone that needs to be replaced, or need to adjust prongs. The metal becomes so hard that it can add a considerable amount of time to the process, or cause the jeweler to take a shortcut.

So what does this all mean?

All of this comes down to my very personal opinion that palladium is not, and will not become, the savior metal for jewelers. I think that the untrained will cause more harm than good while making or repairing jewelry made with it. I think that palladium’s price will continue to outpace other metals and price itself out of the platinum replacement market. And I think that when the economy makes another turn it will fall out of favor just as it did in the 1950s and the 1970s. It may not disappear entirely like it did in the past, but it will certainly not be as popular as it is now.

Or I could be wrong. It’s happened before, just ask my wife or my daughter, I think they keep a list.

In either case, I’d love to hear what you think about the subject.