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Scandium is very, very expensive, quite a bit more than gold for example. This is somewhat odd since its abundance in the earth's crust is fairly high. The problem is that while there is a lot of it, it's spread out thinly, and there are very few places where it's concentrated enough to be extracted economically. It's also fairly difficult to isolate from its ores.
This is a pity, because if it were more common, it could be very useful. It's very strong, light, fairly stable in air, and would make a good substitute for things like aluminum, magnesium, and beryllium in aircraft and other applications where light weight are important. It's essentially non-toxic, unlike beryllium, and would probably make very fine tennis rackets, gold clubs, bicycle locks, and the like. If, that is, it didn't cost a thousand dollars an ounce.
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Clipping of thin sheet.
Sometimes things just fall in your lap out of the clear blue sky. This morning I heard on the radio about a girl with an incredibly thick accent in England who had a small asteroid fall on her foot. This evening a friend I've know from highschool, Donald Barnhart, called up and asked if I'd like some scandium, because he had just picked up a clipping of it and thought I might like it. I said, um, yes, it was only the number one most wanted element on my list of most wanted elements!
The rest of the story about where it came from will have to remain untold, because the source wishes to remain anonymous.
On September 17, 2002 a fraction of this strip was de-accessioned from the Table to be sent to David Franco in small thanks for the many elements he has contributed.
Source: Anonymous
Contributor: Anonymous
Acquired: 29 August, 2002
Price: Donated
Size: 1"
Purity: 99.98%
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Incredible crystals.
This is a truly lovely amount of scandium, ten grams, which would cost you over a thousand dollars from a chemical supplier. It was contributed by a party who wishes to remain anonymous. While it is very pure, 99.9%, that is not pure enough to be of any use in the industrial process their company is involved in, so they felt a contribution to the Periodic Table was in order. For which the Periodic Table is deeply appreciative: This is really an amazing hunk of a very rare substance. The crystals on it are quite remarkable.
The only thing I regret about it is that it's sealed under argon in a glass tube. The value and purity of the sample is such that I could never break the glass, which means I can never actually hold it in my hand. I'll just have to admire it from afar.
Here is a photograph taken through an inspection microscope of an even larger sample (not mine, unfortunately), worth tens of thousands of dollars. Confidentiality prevents me from describing anything more about the size or shape of the sample, only a portion of which you see here:
Source: Anonymous
Contributor: Anonymous
Acquired: 9 September, 2002
Price: Donated
Size: 1"
Purity: 99.9%
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Sample from the Everest Element Set.
Up until the early 1990's a company in Russia sold a periodic table collection with element samples. At some point their American distributor sold off the remaining stock to a man who is now selling them on eBay. The samples (excepted gasses) weight about 0.25 grams each, and the whole set comes in a very nice wooden box with a printed periodic table in the lid.
To learn more about the set you can visit my page about element collecting for a general description and information about how to buy one, or you can see photographs of all the samples from the set displayed on my website in a periodic table layout or with bigger pictures in numerical order.
Source: Rob Accurso
Contributor: Rob Accurso
Acquired: 7 February, 2003
Price: Donated
Size: 0.2"
Purity: >99%
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