Randy_
Member
Pen Plating Cost</u>
Folks are always asking about why rhodium plated pens cost so much and there is a current thread questioning how some vendors can sell gold plated pen kits for the same price as rhodium plated ones. Since the lawn doesn’t need mowing and I’m up to date on my pen crafting, I decided to fire up the calculator and see what gives with plating costs.
First off, let me say that this little excursion is not intended to be a definitive and in-depth study. I am just looking at some rough figures and making a few assumptions so we can get a ballpark idea of what is going on. I have to admit that I had a few preconceived ideas on the subject and was quite surprised by what I discovered.
The basic method was to estimate the plated surface area of the cigar kit, assume a plating thickness and then use current (9-10-07) precious metal prices from the Internet to compute some idea of the actual cost of the plating in the kit. How close I came to reality will be a function of how good the estimates and assumptions are. Regardless of that, however, many of the figures will provide some relative numbers that should be very interesting. I think I was careful in doing the calculations; but if anyone detects any mistakes I hope you will point them out promptly.
Here are a few facts to get us started…….some are important and others are just fun. Gold is currently selling for $705 per troy ounce. A troy ounce is a little heavier than the “ounce†that you and I are used to in our everyday lives. In everyday ounces, one ounce of gold would sell for about $642, platinum would be $1185 and rhodium would be $5460.
Gold and platinum weigh nearly the same (they have similar density); but platinum is quite a bit lighter…..only about 64% of the weight of gold. A cubic inch of gold would cost about $8600 while a cubic inch of rhodium would cost about $47,000. Were rhodium and gold to have the same density, a cubic inch of rhodium would cost a little over $73,000!!
OK, now the serious stuff. For the purposes of this discussion, I am using a cigar pen. Some kits will have more plating and some will have less…..use your imagination for the kits you craft. I took some rough measurements of a cigar kit and estimated what I couldn’t (or was too lazy to) measure and came up with a figure of 2 square inches ± of plating. Then I assumed that the plating was 3 microns thick. (A micron is one millionth of a meter or just under 4 - 1/1000,000â€) According to what I could find on the Internet, 3 micron plating is common for this kind of item and 5 micron plating would be considered heavy duty. If I get really adventurous, I might contact some of the vendors and see if they will release figures on the thicknesses of their platings.
According to my math, one cubic inch of metal will plate approximately 25,400 square inches of surface to a thickness of one micron or 8466 square inches to a thickness of 3 microns. Assuming 2 square inches per kit, one cubic inch of gold will plate 4233 cigar kits. From there, you can determine that the cost of the actual metal plating is about:
Gold = $8600÷4233 = $2.03
Platinum = $17,583÷4233 = $4.15
Rhodium = $47,024÷4233 = $11.11
(NOTE: I just looked in the CSUSA catalog and it seems the price differential for most kits is $5 - $7. The price differential for the cigar kit is $6.56. More on that later.)
OK, it looks like there are some real cost differences between different kit platings, so now the question becomes, how can a vendor sell a kit with gold plating for the same price as one with a rhodium plating??? Easy, they will be going out of business shortly!!<<GRIN>> Just kidding, of course; but I can envision several ways one might accomplish the above and there may be a few other tactics that someone else will point out.
Everyone’s natural assumption is that the vendor is charging the correct price for the gold plating and getting beat up on the rhodium plating, right? Well, suppose the vendor was actually charging “MORE†than he needed to for the gold kits, then he could sell the rhodium kits for less and still make a profit on his combined sales. In essence, he would be price averaging the two platings. He might have to make a little adjustment to correct for one type of kit selling more units than the other; but that would be a simple matter.
Another thing to consider, is the purity of the plating. We all know what 24k gold is…..pure gold. But what does it mean when a vendor says his pens are rhodium plated? Maybe they are plated with pure rhodium or maybe they are plated with some rhodium alloy that is much less expensive. If you used an alloy that was 1/2 as expensive as pure rhodium, the price differential for our cigar kit example would go from $9.09 to $3.63! Remember the recent discussion about iridium fountain nibs? Those little tips were actually iridium alloys and not pure iridium…..because it was such an expensive material. It is important to know composition of the plating and for the average pencrafter that is difficult or impossible to determine.
Finally, one needs to look at plating thickness. Rhodium is about 65 times as hard as 24K gold (6 mohs hardness vs. 2.75 mohs hardness) so it is reasonable to assume you don’t need nearly the thickness of rhodium to achieve the same wear characteristics as 24k gold. That being the case, the figures I have presented above could be a little misleading. I did the calculations assuming platings of equal thickness; but chances are the price differences I computed above are too large since it is likely that the gold plating is thicker or the rhodium plating is thinner or both. You and I have no way of knowing what thickness of rhodium vendors are selling or should be using to meet minimum wear standards; but it is easy to assume that different vendors plate to different thicknesses. The thicker the plating, the longer it will last and the more expensive it should be. Whether economy venders are cutting corners on their plating or high-end vendors are charging a premium for their kits is something that is pretty tough to determine by the average home crafter. Right now, about all we can do is lean on the experience of other pencrafters and learn from their good experiences and their bad.
Folks are always asking about why rhodium plated pens cost so much and there is a current thread questioning how some vendors can sell gold plated pen kits for the same price as rhodium plated ones. Since the lawn doesn’t need mowing and I’m up to date on my pen crafting, I decided to fire up the calculator and see what gives with plating costs.
First off, let me say that this little excursion is not intended to be a definitive and in-depth study. I am just looking at some rough figures and making a few assumptions so we can get a ballpark idea of what is going on. I have to admit that I had a few preconceived ideas on the subject and was quite surprised by what I discovered.
The basic method was to estimate the plated surface area of the cigar kit, assume a plating thickness and then use current (9-10-07) precious metal prices from the Internet to compute some idea of the actual cost of the plating in the kit. How close I came to reality will be a function of how good the estimates and assumptions are. Regardless of that, however, many of the figures will provide some relative numbers that should be very interesting. I think I was careful in doing the calculations; but if anyone detects any mistakes I hope you will point them out promptly.
Here are a few facts to get us started…….some are important and others are just fun. Gold is currently selling for $705 per troy ounce. A troy ounce is a little heavier than the “ounce†that you and I are used to in our everyday lives. In everyday ounces, one ounce of gold would sell for about $642, platinum would be $1185 and rhodium would be $5460.
Gold and platinum weigh nearly the same (they have similar density); but platinum is quite a bit lighter…..only about 64% of the weight of gold. A cubic inch of gold would cost about $8600 while a cubic inch of rhodium would cost about $47,000. Were rhodium and gold to have the same density, a cubic inch of rhodium would cost a little over $73,000!!
OK, now the serious stuff. For the purposes of this discussion, I am using a cigar pen. Some kits will have more plating and some will have less…..use your imagination for the kits you craft. I took some rough measurements of a cigar kit and estimated what I couldn’t (or was too lazy to) measure and came up with a figure of 2 square inches ± of plating. Then I assumed that the plating was 3 microns thick. (A micron is one millionth of a meter or just under 4 - 1/1000,000â€) According to what I could find on the Internet, 3 micron plating is common for this kind of item and 5 micron plating would be considered heavy duty. If I get really adventurous, I might contact some of the vendors and see if they will release figures on the thicknesses of their platings.
According to my math, one cubic inch of metal will plate approximately 25,400 square inches of surface to a thickness of one micron or 8466 square inches to a thickness of 3 microns. Assuming 2 square inches per kit, one cubic inch of gold will plate 4233 cigar kits. From there, you can determine that the cost of the actual metal plating is about:
Gold = $8600÷4233 = $2.03
Platinum = $17,583÷4233 = $4.15
Rhodium = $47,024÷4233 = $11.11
(NOTE: I just looked in the CSUSA catalog and it seems the price differential for most kits is $5 - $7. The price differential for the cigar kit is $6.56. More on that later.)
OK, it looks like there are some real cost differences between different kit platings, so now the question becomes, how can a vendor sell a kit with gold plating for the same price as one with a rhodium plating??? Easy, they will be going out of business shortly!!<<GRIN>> Just kidding, of course; but I can envision several ways one might accomplish the above and there may be a few other tactics that someone else will point out.
Everyone’s natural assumption is that the vendor is charging the correct price for the gold plating and getting beat up on the rhodium plating, right? Well, suppose the vendor was actually charging “MORE†than he needed to for the gold kits, then he could sell the rhodium kits for less and still make a profit on his combined sales. In essence, he would be price averaging the two platings. He might have to make a little adjustment to correct for one type of kit selling more units than the other; but that would be a simple matter.
Another thing to consider, is the purity of the plating. We all know what 24k gold is…..pure gold. But what does it mean when a vendor says his pens are rhodium plated? Maybe they are plated with pure rhodium or maybe they are plated with some rhodium alloy that is much less expensive. If you used an alloy that was 1/2 as expensive as pure rhodium, the price differential for our cigar kit example would go from $9.09 to $3.63! Remember the recent discussion about iridium fountain nibs? Those little tips were actually iridium alloys and not pure iridium…..because it was such an expensive material. It is important to know composition of the plating and for the average pencrafter that is difficult or impossible to determine.
Finally, one needs to look at plating thickness. Rhodium is about 65 times as hard as 24K gold (6 mohs hardness vs. 2.75 mohs hardness) so it is reasonable to assume you don’t need nearly the thickness of rhodium to achieve the same wear characteristics as 24k gold. That being the case, the figures I have presented above could be a little misleading. I did the calculations assuming platings of equal thickness; but chances are the price differences I computed above are too large since it is likely that the gold plating is thicker or the rhodium plating is thinner or both. You and I have no way of knowing what thickness of rhodium vendors are selling or should be using to meet minimum wear standards; but it is easy to assume that different vendors plate to different thicknesses. The thicker the plating, the longer it will last and the more expensive it should be. Whether economy venders are cutting corners on their plating or high-end vendors are charging a premium for their kits is something that is pretty tough to determine by the average home crafter. Right now, about all we can do is lean on the experience of other pencrafters and learn from their good experiences and their bad.
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