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Osiris Precious Metals Osiris, gold, silver, written in Egyptian hieroglyphs in a cartouche 𓁹𓊨𓀭𓋞𓋠𓏪 Wsjrnbwḥḏ(pl.) Osirisgoldsilverplural “Osiris: gold and silver” Osiris was ancient Egypt's god of the afterlife and rebirth and, in myth, its first king. As judge of the dead, he presided over the weighing of the heart, the source of our motto: weighed fairly.
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Guide

What is osmium, and what is it worth?

Osmium is the densest stable element and the rarest of the six platinum-group metals. So little is produced that it's barely traded at all. We have a few arc-melted osmium pellets for sale.

Updated October 30, 2026

We pay more than pawn shops, jewelers, and mail-in gold kits: in Consumer Reports' tests, jewelers and pawn shops paid 36% to 71% of melt value, and mail-in kits 11% to about 29%. We pay 94% for scrap gold. Who pays the most?

How rare osmium is

  • Rarer than gold in the ground. Osmium makes up about 50 parts per trillion of Earth's continental crust.
  • A tiny world supply. Estimates of yearly production run from several hundred to a few thousand kilograms, worldwide. That's a few tons at most, for the whole planet.
  • Barely traded. The United States imported about 1 kilogram of osmium a year from 2021 to 2024, and an estimated 57 kilograms in 2025, against about 2,200 kilograms of iridium and 14,000 kilograms of rhodium that year.
  • No published price. Because so little changes hands, osmium has no exchange price or daily quote the way gold, silver, or platinum do. Each sale is priced between buyer and seller.

What osmium is

Osmium is a hard, brittle, bluish-white metal. At about 22.59 grams per cubic centimeter it's the densest stable element, just ahead of iridium, and about twice as dense as lead. It melts at about 3,033 °C, higher than any other platinum-group metal. Smithson Tennant and William Hyde Wollaston discovered it in 1803 in the residue left when platinum ore is dissolved, and it's still recovered the same way, as a byproduct of mining platinum and nickel.

What it's used for

Very little. Osmium alloys tip fountain pen nibs and make hard-wearing electrical contacts, and an osmium compound is used to stain samples for electron microscopes. With so few uses, demand stays small, which is part of why it's so scarce in the market.

Is osmium safe?

Solid osmium is. In bulk form it's inert at ordinary temperatures, and it doesn't react with air below about 400 °C. The hazard people hear about is osmium tetroxide, a toxic compound that fine osmium powder forms slowly in air. That's why osmium is sold to collectors as solid pieces, not powder. Our pellets are solid arc-melted metal.

Our osmium for sale

We have a few arc-melted osmium pellets available. Arc melting fuses osmium into small, solid, dense beads. Email sales@osirismetals.com or text (415) 340-1003 and we'll send photos, weights, and prices.

Selling osmium

Because there's no published osmium price, we don't post a bid for it. If you have osmium to sell, send photos and the weight and we'll quote it in writing.

This is general information from the sources below, not investment advice.

Sources

Platinum-group metals: All six · Iridium · Ruthenium · Rhodium · Platinum · Palladium