TYB
Why The Hardest Money Always Wins
by Tyler Durden
Thursday, Sep 18, 2025 - 01:45 AM
Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,
French Emperor Napoleon III reserved a special set of aluminum cutlery for only his most honored dinner guests.
Ordinary guests had to settle for gold utensils.
In the mid-1800s, aluminum was rarer and more coveted than gold.
As a result, aluminum bullion bars were included among France’s national treasures, and aluminum jewelry became a status symbol of the French aristocracy.
Aluminum—element 13 on the periodic table—is abundant in nature, but it’s typically bound up in complex chemical compounds rather than found in its pure metallic form.
Extracting pure aluminum from these compounds was an extremely costly and complex process, making it harder to produce than gold. The price reflected that.
In 1852, aluminum was around $37 per ounce, significantly more expensive than gold at $20.67 per ounce.
But aluminum’s story was about to change dramatically.
In 1886, a groundbreaking discovery enabled the mass production of pure aluminum at a fraction of the cost.
Before this innovation, global aluminum output was just a few ounces per month.
Afterward, America’s leading aluminum company began producing 800 ounces a day. Within two decades, that same company—later known as Alcoa—was churning out over 1.4 million ounces daily.
The price of aluminum collapsed—from a staggering $550 per pound in 1852 to just $12 in 1880. By the early 1900s, a pound of aluminum cost around 20 cents.
In just over a decade, aluminum had gone from the world’s most expensive metal to one of its cheapest.
Today, aluminum is no longer a prized metal for imperial feasts or national treasuries. It’s a household material, used in soda cans and kitchen foil.
Aluminum’s dramatic fall from luxury to ubiquity highlights a key monetary principle: hardness—the most important quality of a good money.
https://www.zerohedge.com/precious-metals/why-hardest-money-always-wins