Samarium (Sm)

Samarium metal ingot - one troy ounce - .995 bullion     Samarium belongs to the rare earth family of elemental metals and is the 40th most abundant element in the earths crust.  Like the other rare earth metals it is not found in its pure form in the earths crust but is a component of several well known minerals including samarskite, monazite, and bastnäsite. French chemist Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran isolated samarium in 1879 from the former of these minerals using early spectroscopic techniques which he had helped to pioneer and for which he named it.  The latter two of these minerals are the most common commercial sources of samarium with concentrations of up to 2.8%. An important industrial application is samarium-cobalt magnets which have superior properties to neodymium magnets in high temperature applications. Isotopes of samarium have uses in chemotherapeutic agents and in the control rods of nuclear reactors.   Inscribed on our ingots are the chemical symbol (Sm), pu