Many Many people understand very little as to why the value of platinum is what it is, so we thought we’d drop everything we were doing to explain why!

Platinum is a relatively unknown metal because it has a much shorter history in modern circles than other precious metals like gold and silver.

And when the market is healthy, platinum can be more than double the price of gold –although its value can also fall well below the value of gold when the market is weak. Platinum is strange like that; but how come?

The History of Platinum

First let’s take a look at the history of platinum and go back –way back. Around 2 billion years ago by scientist’s current guess, to when the first known asteroid crash landed into earth and caused a whole lot of problems for the planet. That was somewhere around 2 Billion BC.

That asteroid, and many like it contained scores of platinum, which is otherwise an incredibly rare metal on planet earth.

The next recorded “platinum event” was logged a whole lot later in history than that, as archaeologists located jewellery made from gold from the long lost kingdom of ancient Nubia which had traces of platinum within it. That was in 1200 BC.

And then in 700 BC, Egypt’s high priestess Shepenupet was buried in a majestic gold and platinum decorated sarcophagus, its hieroglyphs fashioned out of the two precious metals. In addition to platinum glyphs, a small document casket made of platinum was also included within her tomb.

Fast Forward another several hundred years, and in 100 BC pre-Inca civilisations had used the precious metal platinum in ceremonial jewellery located in what we now consider South America.

For over two millennia following the pre-Inca civilisation that were familiar with the metal, it hadn’t made another recorded appearance.

By 1590 AD, Spanish conquistadors were ravaging the people of the land once dominated by the Incas in South America and came across the metal. As history remembers the conquistadors for their brutal barbaric behaviours and less so their smarts, they dismissed the precious metal as inferior and gave it the origin of the name we call it today; they called it “platina”, meaning “little silver”. And that’s when its name stuck.

In the 1700’s, when early European scientists were obsessed with the concept of being able to turn lead into gold, they praised platinum as just the ingredient to be able to accomplish the feat. The practice at the time was called Alchemy.

Later that century, in 1751, a scientist from Sweden finally labelled the metal as precious. And later yet in that century, King Louis XV1 of France declared the metal the only metal fit for kings.

Throughout the close of the 17th century, the metal had been used in gifts to the Pope of the day, and also became the centre point of the metric system.

Platinum was the choice of the first standard kilogram metric weight, and that weight still exists today in the International Bureau of Weights and Measures.

The precious metal was used for everything from religious symbols to interior decoration until another scientist from Britain discovered a way to make the metal more malleable, thus increasing its number of applications dramatically. It was finally ready for commercial uses.

Since then, the precious metal platinum has been discovered in deposits located in Russia and Africa, and jewellers were just about the central group who used the metal for their creations. The metal was used in royal crowns, gifts for tsars, diamond platinum eternity rings and eventually deemed a “strategic metal” by the United States during WWII when resources were low. This new designation temporarily made using it for jewellery illegal, although after the war the precious metal was back in the hands of jewellers by 1947. Just in time for Elvis to popularize the metal for wedding rings a mere 20 years later.

The story ends with platinum being a vogue jewellery choice from the red carpet to her Majesty in jolly old England.

With a rich history (pun!) like that, and with its absolute rarity status, platinum has retained its value and no artificial process has been found where we can make our own from scratch as we can with diamonds.
And there are so many things we can do with diamonds, but that is a story for another day!

Back to the Future

Now back to present day; platinum is exchanged on stock markets, collect in coin form, and Switzerland offers platinum accounts where the precious metal can be bought or sold like currencies.

While gold can have its roots traced back to early merchants, it still has made numerous more appearances through history to warrant it a lower value than platinum for the most part.

Platinum is a super metal, one that has such an exceptional history that can only be matched by fantasy, like Superman’s Krypton. Except we don’t need an alien to travel millions of miles to bring it to us –it’s here and now, and as close as your local jeweller.

This article is contributed by Media Buzzer.