Earth system
Commodities
What is sought out of the ground, treated as geology. Which minerals carry it, which mineral systems concentrate it, and which real deposits it is documented in — and no prices, forecasts or rankings anywhere.
A commodity is not an element, not a mineral and not a rock. It cuts across all three: copper the commodity arrives in several different minerals from several different mineral systems, and one of the most-traded mineral commodities — the rare earth elements — is not a chemical element at all.[1]
A commodity being documented in a deposit says it is there. It does not say it can be recovered, and Lithoen records an economic role such as co-product or by-product only where a source states one. Everything else is a documented association.[1, 2]
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What a mineral commodity is
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.
Occurrence, deposit, resource, reserve
Five words that are used interchangeably and mean five different things. Only the first two are geological, and the definition of the second contains the word "might".
Base metals
Copper, zinc, lead and nickel: the commodities the mineral systems in this corpus most often concentrate.
Resource commodity
Copper (commodity)
Copper as a sought material rather than as a chemical element. The distinction matters: the element is in every crustal rock, and the commodity exists only where a system has concentrated it and left it recoverable.
Resource commodity
Zinc (commodity)
Zinc as a sought material, characteristically won from sediment-hosted and volcanogenic sulfide systems.
Resource commodity
Lead (commodity)
Lead as a sought material, characteristically accompanying zinc in low-temperature carbonate-hosted systems.
Resource commodity
Nickel (commodity)
Nickel as a sought material, won from two entirely different kinds of system: magmatic sulfide accumulations and lateritic weathering profiles.
Metals recovered alongside others
Cobalt, molybdenum, silver and the platinum-group metals, which are rarely the reason a deposit is worked.
Resource commodity
Cobalt (commodity)
Cobalt as a sought material, characteristically recovered alongside nickel rather than on its own.
Resource commodity
Molybdenum (commodity)
Molybdenum as a sought material, characteristically a by-product of porphyry systems.
Resource commodity
Silver (commodity)
Silver as a commodity: recovered from a wide range of deposit classes, and recorded in both USGS deposit databases Lithoen reads as a grade in grams per tonne alongside the principal metals.
Resource commodity
Platinum-group elements (commodity)
The platinum-group elements as sought materials, characteristically concentrated by immiscible sulfide liquid in magmatic systems.
Grouped commodities
Commodities that are not single elements. The rare earths are the standing example: a group sought and reported together because its members substitute for one another and separate with difficulty.
Resource commodity
Rare earth elements (commodity)
A commodity GROUPING, not a chemical element: the lanthanides together with yttrium and sometimes scandium, sought and reported as a group because they occur together and are separated only with difficulty. The clearest case in the corpus that a commodity is not an element.
Resource commodity
Platinum-group elements (commodity)
The platinum-group elements as sought materials, characteristically concentrated by immiscible sulfide liquid in magmatic systems.
Others
Chromium and gold, each documented in deposits held here.
Resource commodity
Chromium (commodity)
Chromium as a sought material, won almost entirely from chromite accumulated in layered intrusions.
Resource commodity
Gold (commodity)
Gold as a sought material, recovered from a wide range of systems including as a by-product of copper systems.
Hub last updated 2026-09-07. Every entry above is a structured record; the bracketed references link to the entities whose claims support each statement.