With high palladium trading prices, now is a good time to liquidate your palladium scrap holdings. 

Demand is high. Because palladium is a secondary product that is recovered from platinum and nickel mining, miners have limited ability to increase palladium output in response to rising prices. 

Are coins and bullion bars good investments? In today’s post, you will learn what you need to know to make a good decision about whether to sink your money into these popular investments. 

We have written a lot in the past about gold scrap, silver scrap, and platinum scrap.

Today, we would like to take a look at palladium scrap. Why? Because palladium is currently trading at $2,208.00, which compares favorably to gold, which is now trading at $1906.80. Like the trading price of gold, the trading price of palladium has been rising.

Do you like to buy silver, gold, platinum and rhodium bullion bars and coins?

If you do, you are making a prudent investment choice for these reasons . . .

• You know exactly what you are buying, because they are precisely measured, and issued by governments and reliable companies that are generally trustworthy.

• You can gauge whether your bars and coins are fairly priced, because you can compare their weight to current trading prices. (Note, however, that in most cases bullion bars and coins are sold at prices that are slightly higher than current trading prices.)

• They are convenient investments – easy to buy. Plus, they are packaged in sealed plastic containers that protect them, and which can be easily stored in safety deposit boxes, safes and other secure locations.

• You are all but assured that the precious metals they contain are pure.

• You can enjoy volume discounts, because many dealers will reduce the price per unit if you buy 10, 20, 50 or more at one time.

Okay, those are good reasons. But do they mean that you are making the most profitable investment possible in precious metals if you buy bars and coins? We’ll return to that question in a minute. But first, let’s consider a different question.

It has been a few months since we wrote about palladium on this blog. And it is time to write about it again. Why? Because palladium trading prices are rising steadily. That’s another way of saying that if you acquired some palladium scrap or bullion a few years ago and simply held onto it, you would be making a nice profit on it today.

People confuse palladium and platinum. Both metals are white, lustrous, tarnish-resistant . . . and rare. But if you compare the prices of palladium and platinum jewelry, you will notice immediately that a piece of palladium jewelry sells for about one-third more than a similar piece of platinum jewelry, even though both items weigh about the same.

We don’t have a crystal ball that lets us see what precious metals you now own – either in bullion, in materials that you haven’t yet recycled or elsewhere - but we’re willing to guess that most of your metals investments fall into the mid-term category that FINRA defines: you’re going to have them for between three and 10 years, so they should be investments that offer stable long-term growth.