Although it sits on the periodic table alongside the transition metals, yttrium is, chemically speaking, more at home with the rare earth series of elements. The extreme difficulty of isolating it from the other rare earth elements with which it’s always found is by far the largest determinant in the relatively high cost the end user will end up paying. Misch metal, the starting alloy a refinery gets after the non-metallic impurities are stripped away from the ores, is more than 100 times cheaper than pure yttrium metal which giving clear indication of the costs involved in extraction.