The band at the 43rd annual International Precious Metals
Institute Conference is billed, at least according to the huge glowing sign
near the stage, as Abbacadabra, “the ultimate ABBA tribute.” But talented as
they are, Ingo Wolf, a 54-year-old German scientist and serial entrepreneur,
sees room for improvement. “It’s very difficult to make a copy,” Wolf shouts
over a rendition of Money, Money, Money. He wears a hotel-branded polo shirt, a
guitar pendant necklace, and a chocolate smudge on his lip from the nearby
fondue fountain (sponsored by Pamp, the Swiss seller of gold bars). “Everyone
expects you to be as good as the original.”
As we sip Heinekens at a booth at the Peppermill Resort’s Edge Nightclub in
Reno, Nev., Wolf and I discuss how the singers’ glittering microphones look
almost as if they’re made of osmium, the precious metal he’s come to this trade
show to promote. Of course, if they were made of osmium, they’d be worth more
than all of ABBA’s music royalties combined. “You have to mine 10,000 tons of
platinum ore just to find a sugar cube of osmium,” he asserts. “This is what we
call rare.”
Wolf’s big bet is that the element, which is extracted in vanishingly small
quantities as a byproduct of nickel and platinum mining, has commercial
potential even greater than that of diamonds. Osmium crystals, which, unlike
diamonds, can form only in laboratory settings, have stronger abrasion
resistance and purportedly refract light at greater distances than the
traditional engagement ring gemstone. Since starting the Osmium-Institute, a
sort of for-profit advocacy group that oversees trade certifications and
outreach to merchants and consumers, Wolf has been talking up these and other
distinctive properties, such as osmium’s highest-of-all-metals density and its
gorgeous, Atlantis-blue finish.
Read more about Ingo Wolf and his quest to spark demand for one of the rarest elements on the planet on the Bloomberg website HERE
