related:

Platinum Futures Trading - Platinum Market

Historical Platinum

The term platinum often brings connotations of high-tech, status and wealth. Light greyish in color, the metal has come to be associated with credit cards, its role in the aerospace industry, even in jewelry and as a mark of achievement as in ‘platinum’ sales in the recording industry. As a standard in the generic sense, it normally denotes a rank above gold, silver and bronze. As its reputation attests, platinum is without a doubt, a precious metal.

Evolving into Futures

In 1956 Platinum futures were first introduced by the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYME). (palladium introduced 1968)

Today, platinum continues as a scarse metal indeed - joined by palladium as part of the platinum metals group. With total mine production at only a fraction of gold production. Relatively low mine production, at approximately five million ounces/year, combined with estimates of limited below-ground reserves, are joined by limited above-ground inventories

It is not uncommon for the price of platinum to double gold.

---

History shows that the South American Indians utilized the metal as early as over 1,000 years back.

The first written evidence is by the Italian Julius Scalinger, in 1557. Europe later learned of the new metal through the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The appearance of platinum made another resurgence during the seventeenth century. When Spanish Conquistidors inadvertantly discovered deposits in a Columbian river basin while panning for gold. Hence, the birth of the name, ‘Platina’ – which derives from “Plata’.

Even today the metal goes by the name “white gold’ when referring to jewelry and as the accepted Greek term (monikered by Henrik Sheffer)