Are minerals getting scarcer? A century of real prices

Measured in constant 1998 dollars, the latest ten years' price is below the first ten years' of the record for 11 of 22 minerals (aluminum, cobalt, potash fell most) and above it for 11 (gold, rare earths, tungsten rose most). 10 of the 22 had their highest real price before 1950, and 6 (chromium, iron ore, manganese, nickel, phosphate rock, platinum-group metals) peaked in 2005 or later.

If a mineral were running short, you would expect its real price to climb over time. The record does not show that as a rule: many prices rose in wars and oil shocks and then fell back, and a few, such as gold and chromium, are higher than a century ago. This is a description of what happened, not a forecast. Prices respond to demand, technology, costs and policy as well as to scarcity, and these are US prices.

What is measured: USGS's "unit value", the price per metric ton of US apparent consumption, in the unit USGS uses for each mineral (for example gold content or refined metal), in constant 1998 dollars deflated with the US consumer price index. Because the product behind each series differs, compare a mineral with its own past, not with another mineral. Click a heading to sort.

Real price in the first and latest ten years of the record, the peak, and the long-run trend per decade, for each mineral
Mineral	First ten years	Latest ten years	Latest vs first	Peak year	Trend per decade
Aluminum 1900–2021	13,480 1900–09	1,473 to 2021	0.11× 89% lower	1916 1.5× first decade	−16.6%
Antimony 1900–2019	3,980 1900–09	6,631 to 2019	1.67× 1.7× higher	1970 3.3× first decade	+3.4%
Barite 1900–2019	74 1900–09	80 to 2019	1.09× 1.1× higher	1914 2.3× first decade	−2.8%
Chromium 1900–2022	831 1900–09	1,533 to 2022	1.85× 1.8× higher	2008 3.2× first decade	+10.7%
Cobalt 1900–2021	89,330 1900–09	24,600 to 2021	0.28× 72% lower	1979 1.3× first decade	−4.4%
Copper 1900–2020	6,150 1900–09	4,592 to 2020	0.75× 25% lower	1916 1.5× first decade	−2.5%
Gold 1900–2022	11,180,000 1900–09	29,800,000 to 2022	2.67× 2.7× higher	1980 3.5× first decade	+9.0%
Graphite 1900–2022	1,370 1900–09	801 to 2022	0.58× 42% lower	1917 2.2× first decade	−4.0%
Iron ore 1900–2021	37 1900–09	62 to 2021	1.68× 1.7× higher	2021 2.3× first decade	+4.8%
Lead 1900–2021	1,860 1900–09	1,540 to 2021	0.83× 17% lower	1948 1.4× first decade	−2.6%
Manganese 1900–2022	588 1900–09	857 to 2022	1.46× 1.5× higher	2008 3.1× first decade	+5.9%
Molybdenum 1912–2022	24,771 1912–21	15,728 to 2022	0.63× 37% lower	1979 4.6× first decade	−0.8%
Nickel 1900–2019	18,000 1900–09	10,616 to 2019	0.59× 41% lower	2007 1.6× first decade	−1.8%
Phosphate rock 1900–2022	67 1900–09	52 to 2022	0.79× 21% lower	2009 1.4× first decade	+0.1%
Platinum-group metals 1900–2022	13,390,000 1900–09	20,412,000 to 2022	1.52× 1.5× higher	2022 3.1× first decade	−1.4%
Potash 1900–2022	1,263 1900–09	348 to 2022	0.28× 72% lower	1916 5.9× first decade	−15.2%
Rare earths 1922–2020	6,227 1922–31	14,021 to 2020	2.25× 2.3× higher	1933 23.3× first decade	−6.4%
Silver 1900–2021	348,000 1900–09	431,500 to 2021	1.24× 1.2× higher	1980 3.8× first decade	+2.7%
Tin 1900–2021	12,082 1900–09	14,710 to 2021	1.22× 1.2× higher	1980 3.1× first decade	+1.6%
Tungsten 1900–2019	12,430 1900–09	27,880 to 2019	2.24× 2.2× higher	1916 5.7× first decade	+0.6%
Vanadium 1910–2022	27,560 1910–19	20,023 to 2022	0.73× 27% lower	1933 2.2× first decade	−8.5%
Zinc 1900–2022	2,100 1900–09	1,770 to 2022	0.84× 16% lower	1915 2.4× first decade	−1.7%

USGS Data Series 140, Historical statistics for mineral and material commodities in the United States (USGS). Prices in 1998 US dollars per metric ton of US apparent consumption (USGS unit value, CPI-U deflator). "Trend per decade" is the least-squares slope of the logarithm of price against year over the whole record, converted to a percentage per decade: a description of the record. Fluorspar (to 2006) and Niobium (to 2000) are left out of the table because USGS's price series for them ends well before the latest data. Rare earths' record starts in 1922 and its first decade is thin, which is why its peak is so many times the first-decade average.

Each mineral's century

One chart per mineral, each with its own vertical scale starting at zero, with the peak marked.

More patterns

Concentration: How much of each commodity comes from one country?
Producer or exporter?: Is the biggest producer also the biggest seller abroad?
Prices in real terms: Which prices are records once inflation is removed?
Growth and decline: Whose output is rising or falling fastest?
Linked prices and seasons: Which prices move together, and which have a season?
Supplier exposure: Which big buyers lean on one supplier for critical minerals?
Trade after export controls: What happened to a country's exports after it controlled them?
Export share history: Who has gained and lost share of world exports since 2000?
Prices around export controls: What happened to mineral prices after export controls?
Export basket prices: What would a country's commodity exports have fetched at each month's prices?
Substitution coverage: How large are other exporters' sales to other buyers next to an importer's biggest supplier?
Critical risk matrix: Which critical minerals combine concentrated mining, export controls and import reliance?
Country reserve life: Which producing countries have the least of what they mine?
Prices and cumulative output: Do prices fall as the world digs up more of a mineral?
US import reliance and recycling: How much of each mineral does the United States import, and how much comes from scrap?
Data confidence: How firm are each commodity's production numbers?
Export controls and bans: Which governments restrict exports of minerals, and what is still in force?
Chokepoints: Which narrow passages do the world's commodities depend on?
By-product minerals: Which minerals are by-products of other metals?
Peak production: Which minerals and fuels are still setting records, and which peaked years ago?
Reserves and mining: Where are the deposits, and who digs them up?
Supply concentration: Which commodities depend on the fewest suppliers?
Land or yield?: Did output grow because farmers planted more or farmed better?
Supply shocks and prices: When world output falls, do prices rise?
Category price indices: How have energy, metals and food prices moved since 1960?
Drawdowns and volatility: How far do prices fall, and do they recover?
Stocks and prices: Are prices lower when the world holds more stock?
Which prices follow oil?: How closely does each commodity track crude oil?
How reliable is the data?: How much of world output rests on estimates?
Net exporters and importers: Who is a net seller and who a net buyer?
Country leaders: Which countries lead across the most commodities?
Export dependency: Which countries rely on one commodity?
Concentration over time: Has production spread out or narrowed?
Import dependency: Which countries buy most of a commodity from one supplier?
Supplier shifts: Who gained and lost importers' business?
Trade price against benchmark: Does traded product sell above or below the benchmark price?
Prices in other currencies: How much of a price move is the dollar?
Do prices lead each other?: Does one commodity price move before another?
Volatility over time: Are prices more volatile than they used to be?
Seasonality: Which prices have a calendar-month pattern?
Price ratios: What does one commodity buy of another, and is that high or low?
El Niño and prices: Do El Niño and La Niña years move commodity prices?
Who consumes it: Which countries consume each commodity, and how much per person?
Self-sufficiency: Which large markets depend on imports, and which produce far more than they use?
Trade flows: Who sells each commodity to whom?

Every figure is computed from the same tables as the commodity pages. The full set is in patterns.json, and single facts from it appear each day on the facts page.