Recently, I wrote an article for this magazine about collecting Platinum Eagles. In it, I briefly touched on platinum’s investment potential because of factors such as rarity, jewelry use, and auto industry value as a component of catalytic converters. This last usage may in the not-too-distant future go the way of buggy whips, as just another relic of the past. In this column, I’ll tell you about a thread in CoinTalk that looked at platinum coins as an investment.
The thread began with a member writing: “With inflation as high as it is right now, I wanted to invest a little bit more in [precious metals]. But with gold at nearly $2,000/oz and silver at nearly $26/oz, I just couldn’t justify buying more at this moment. So, I decided to pick up a couple of ounces of platinum instead. Platinum used to be priced above gold at some points in the past, and so I felt like getting 2oz of platinum for the price of 1 oz of gold could potentially be a good deal. . .. What do you guys think?”
In response, the next poster noted that platinum can really be hard to move when you need to sell. As primarily an industrial commodity, platinum’s price depends
