commodities
A commodity is not an element, not a mineral and not a deposit. It is the thing that is sought — and the clearest proof is that one of the most-traded mineral commodities is not a chemical element at all.
About: Rare earth elements (commodity) · Copper (commodity)
An element is defined by its atomic number: copper is copper because its nucleus holds 29 protons. A mineral is a species with a structure and a composition, accepted by name. A rock is an aggregate of minerals. A commodity is what is sought, extracted and sold, and it cuts across all three — copper the commodity is carried in chalcopyrite, bornite and a dozen other minerals, in rocks of half a dozen deposit classes.[1]
Lithoen keeps them as four entity types for that reason. Collapsing commodity into element would make it impossible to say what "rare earth elements" is, and collapsing it into mineral would make it impossible to say that the same metal comes out of quite different minerals depending on the system.[1]
The rare earth elements are a group: the lanthanides with yttrium and, by some definitions, scandium. They are sought, reported and traded together because they substitute for one another in the same crystal sites and are separated only with difficulty. There is no element called "rare earths", and there is no mineral called it either.[1]
Silver makes a quieter version of the same point from the other direction. It is an element with its own atomic number, and as a commodity it is almost never the reason a deposit is worked: both USGS deposit databases record a silver grade beside the principal metals, because silver travels with copper, lead and zinc systems rather than forming its own.[1]
No price. No forecast. No production figure attributed to a country. No ranking of jurisdictions. Those are market data, they change weekly, and putting them in a scientific corpus would make the geology expire along with them. Commodity economics is a separate system with a separate update cycle.[1]
What a commodity record does carry is geology: which minerals hold it, which systems concentrate it, which environments host it, and how it is measured.[1]
Often said
“The rare earth elements are a chemical element.”
What the evidence supports
They are a group — the lanthanides with yttrium and sometimes scandium — sought and reported together because they occur together and separate with difficulty.
Supporting records: ree-is-not-an-element
Often said
“A commodity is the same thing as the element it is named after.”
What the evidence supports
Copper the element is defined by 29 protons. Copper the commodity is defined by being sought, and it arrives in several different minerals from several different mineral systems.
Supporting records: ree-is-not-an-element · silver-commodity-byproduct
Bracketed references link to the structured entity records whose claims support each paragraph. Last updated 2026-09-07.