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Rare Chemical Library

Antique laboratory bench with laboratory glassware and various reagents in test tubes.

The Sigma-Aldrich® Rare Chemical Library, originally called Alfred Bader Chemicals, began in 1966 as a part of Aldrich Chemical Company. It was comprised of discontinued Aldrich® compounds and other compounds and collections from numerous resources. These were sourced from The United States and Europe. In 1967, the first catalog was published and had approximately 6,000 compounds listed. The Rare Chemical Library now has over 100,000 compounds, which consist of the following:

Private and academic collections released upon the researcher's retirement
Products no longer available from our catalogs
One-time synthetic series from remote and obscure sources
Synthetic analogs and precursors

The compounds in our Rare Chemical Library are offered in standard unit sizes ranging from 1 mg to 1 gram. Custom requested sizes are also available through Aldrich^CPR.

These compounds are now included under the Aldrich^CPR brand adding a wide variety of functional groups, both aromatic and non-aromatic.