Today, we are talking rhodium, the fancy brother of the precious metals. Now, I'm sure you may have heard of rhodium before, the überly, disgustingly, ugly, horrendously expensive metal. And yes, it is. Today, we're going to talk about it. What the hell is rhodium? Should I be plating my silver in rhodium? Should you be plating white gold in rhodium? What are the pros and cons? Talk to me, Gus. 

What is Rhodium?

So, what the hell is actual rhodium? If we're gonna talk about it, let's first find out what it actually is. Rhodium on the periodic table is Rh. It was first discovered in 1803 by William Hyde Wollaston, who is also the English chemist responsible for discovering palladium. For years, rhodium went relatively unscathed with no real use for decades. That is until the jewelry world caught a whiff of its anti-corrosion properties and began to use it to rhodium plate jewelry that tarnished often, like silver. Of course, the most popular use of rhodium was actually not in jewelry use.

In 1976, Volvo introduced the three-way catalytic converter. Rhodium was used in the converter to reduce the amount of nitrogen oxide exhaust gases emitted into the atmosphere. Since then, it's been used in the automotive industry heavily, with car companies spending millions of dollars a year to manage demand. It's this insane demand for this incredibly rare metal that's the main culprit as to why rhodium is so freaking expensive. Because rhodium is so ridiculously hard to mine, and because car companies are in such high demand for it, it's quite literally made rhodium skyrocket.

Back in 2021, rhodium climbed all the way up to $28,000 dollars an ounce, which is legit mind-blowing! Luckily, since then, it's now stabilized, and it's trading around $4,800 an ounce, which is still pretty ridiculous. To put things into perspective, an ounce of gold, which, of course, is also a precious metal, currently trades at about $1,900 an ounce, making rhodium more than two and a half times more expensive.

In short, rhodium is gonna cost you a kidney, a liver, a firstborn child, a left arm, maybe some eyelashes, and all the jewelry your grandmother has stored up in that little box upstairs that you secretly pawned because you're an animal.

How does rhodium help with jewelry? How do we jewelers use it to make your lives a lot easier? What are the uses of it? What are the pros and cons? And should I be doing it? And should you be spending all this hard-earned money? Your hard-earned money, all that paper money, all that drug money.

The Pros

1. Anti-corroding properties. 

Number one, and obviously, the most obvious one is the fact that it has anti-corroding properties. So if you dip it in any of these other white base metals, such as silver or white gold, it's going to become a sealant. Now, silver, of course, is the finickiest of metals. It's a beautiful, beautiful metal, as I've said many, many times before. However, it is very prone to tarnishing. What the heck is tarnishing?

Tarnishing is silver reacting to sulfur in the air. It corrodes the silver, turns it black, and you get that really, really ugly tarnish in between your links or on top of the locks. Dipping your silver in rhodium essentially acts like a sealant and protects it from the air in the atmosphere, keeping it nice and shiny and beautiful and mostly looking brand new. Silver is one of those types of metals that you constantly have to buff or maybe even put into some sort of solution to bring out that shine again. Rhodium dipping silver is the surefire way of not having to do any of those things because, again, it has those anti-corrosion principles that people absolutely love when it comes to making jewelry.

2. The Look.

Of course, the second reason is the look. Silver itself has kind of a white, palish metallic look. When you dip it in rhodium, it gives it a different aesthetic altogether. It resembles white gold almost one to one, and the shine of silver dipped in rhodium honestly is such a beautiful look.

3. It's zero maintenance. 

Number three, and the final one, and it's honestly my favorite one, is the fact that it requires no maintenance on silver itself. Like I mentioned before, and many times in my other videos, you have no idea how much maintenance silver requires. It's a base metal that after maybe two to three weeks of wear, maybe even after going to the gym, it'll begin to lose its shine. A lot of people don't like dealing with that. A lot of people don't like grabbing a rag and polishing it every single time. It's annoying. Trust me, I'm one of those people. I don't like doing that.

So I grab my silver, and I dip it in rhodium because I know that it's zero maintenance. I just wear it every once in a while. If it gets really, really ugly, I just run it through some fresh water and some soap, and it's back to new again. It's honestly a no-brainer. If you're giving this as a gift to someone, and you don't really know that they're going to take care of that jewelry, dip it in some rhodium. You know you're going to be giving something that's going to be headache-free. I can't tell you how much time you're going to save, and honestly, if you're one of those low-maintenance guys, it's something that you definitely need to consider.

The Only Con

Price. 

To dip your white gold or silver jewelry in rhodium costs a lot of money. There are so many people that tell me, 'Hey Gus, I thought all your silver jewelry automatically came rhodium-dipped.' I can't tell you how that can't be further from the truth. If all my silver jewelry automatically came dipped, I would have to charge you thousands of dollars for the simplest thing because quite literally, that's how much it costs. Say as an example, you order a 10mm 24-inch silver chain. That piece automatically is going to be costing you anywhere from $500 - $600. But if you want to rhodium-dip it, add an extra $285 - $350 just to plate it one time. If you find value in that because you don't have to do any maintenance, great.

Other people may not necessarily mind doing a little maintenance on their pieces, and so you've got to figure that out and see if it works for you or not. Just understand that it doesn't automatically come rhodium dipped if you're ordering a silver piece. For most people, and also be aware of the people that say that they're rhodium dipping something and they're actually not. I've looked a lot on other people's websites on eBay, and a lot of this stainless steel says "with rhodium wash", and that's absolutely not rhodium.

You're not paying an extra thirty dollars for rhodium on a big chain. That just doesn't even make sense. Make sure that when you're purchasing something that's silver or stainless steel, washed or dipped in rhodium, that it's actually true rhodium. Buy the jeweler. Make sure you trust them. Not the price of the actual piece. That's a GVJ stamp, baby!

And finally, longevity of your chain.

Now let's talk longevity. That's going to depend on the acidity of your sweat, how often you're using it. No one can give you a real-time frame on how long a rhodium dip is going to last on something silver, or even white gold. But on average, if you're never going to take it off, say you ordered a 10mm 24-inch chain, it's going to last you anywhere from eight months to about a year and a half if you maintain it well. If you're an animal, you're in Miami popping bottles in the club with a jet ski, you're banging it everywhere...you're looking at about three months, you monster! You just wasted your money.

At the end of the day, it's all subjective. It's going to boil down to if you find value in rhodium dipping your silver or white gold jewelry. If you're a low-maintenance guy and you can afford an extra couple hundred bucks, do it. If you just like the look of silver, do that as well. Either direction you go is a perfectly good choice.