Over the course of this year the Platinum price has increased steadily with a 30% increase in the price from just under 1150 USD per ounce in January of 2007 to over 1450 USD per ounce today.

Platinum is a heavy, malleable, ductile, precious, grey-white transition metal, platinum is resistant to corrosion and occurs in some nickel and copper ores along with some native deposits. Platinum is mostly used in jewellery, as well as laboratory equipment, electrical contacts, dentistry, and automobile emissions control devices.

Platinum is also use in watch making. Such watchmakers as Vacheron Constantin, Patek Philippe, Rolex, Breitling, among others, all use platinum for their unique high quality watches. Many watchmakers highly appreciate the unique properties of platinum as it neither tarnishes nor wears out and is ideal for gems setting. Vacheron Constantin, in fact, started using platinum in watch production as early as the 1820s. Today the company has an extensive collection of platinum timepieces,

Platinum, nevertheless is difficult to work with. When pure the metal looks grayish white. Platinum is corrosion resistant and this makes it ideal for catalytic converters, incorporated in automobile exhaust systems, as well as tips of spark plugs.

Of course,the wear- and tarnish-resistance characteristics of platinum are well suited for making fine jewellery. Due to its rarity, platinum is more precious than gold. The price of platinum changes along with its availability, but its price is normally slightly less than 150% of the price of gold and it is certainly keeping pace with this ratio.

Since 2000, platinum has been on a steady increase in value and it seems very likely that the platinum price is set to increase in value over the coming years.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 11:22 am.