So having got a little swept up in the idea of Platinum...love the weight 34% more than 18ct gold
it got me looking at raw material prices and I was surprised to find how much cheaper Platinum was than Gold
current prices...= 1.55 ratio.
1kg of Gold 24ct = £ 40'253 bar / ingot 118mm x 53mm x 8mm
1kg of Platinum 999 = £ 26'000 bar / ingot 79mm x 40mm x 15.3mm
so I am struggling to understand why the massive hike in price...
for jewellery and watch manufacture the Gold 24ct gold is mixed with other metals 75/25 to end up with 18ct whereas the Platinum is left pure (999) for manufacture so I can see it 'gold' goes further.
But that still does not work out to an increase in raw material costs ?....or am i missing something ???? more likely being stupid and somebody with a bigger brain will explain.
Patek 5496R £ 67'280
Patek 5496P £ 84'640
A 25% increase for Platinum over Gold....
don't phone its just for fun.....
Last edited by TKH; 9th February 2020 at 16:30.
There are additional manufacturing costs with Platinum as it is much more difficult to machine than gold, but that in NO way justifies the obscenely high mark-up that manufacturers and AD’s charge for Platinum. Platinum is seen as rarer and more desirable than gold and therefore sellers are happy to load the price even more and are content to ignore the fact that platinum is much cheaper than gold.Originally Posted by TKH
From what I understand platinum is much more difficult to machine giving it higher wastage and more labour intensive, of course I could be talking total bollocks.
Historically platinum was more expensive, clearly not so now - but who reduces the price of luxury goods under those circumstances?
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
No, you are not (see my reply above to TKH). Regarding wastage, there is very little as it is standard practice that all precious metal machining waste/ manufacturing scrap is carefully collected and recycled, it is too costly not to!
Mostly exclusivity but there are other costs to consider. Firstly if platinum is 34% heavier then you can’t compare kg/kg for the same size (volume) of watch. You need to compare 1.34kg of platinum to 1.00kg of gold. Then there is the loss allowance in manufacture. I can’t remember the numbers but if you search you’ll see that the wastage is substantially higher for platinum (probably because scrap re-processing is difficult or even impossible with platinum???). Add in the 950/750 purity and tooling costs and you’ll derive a cost to produce a platinum watch that is in fact a little bit higher than a gold one; not enough to justify the price gap of course but that was based in the historically higher price of platinum anyway.
^^^ Excellent point!
some good points but even after you have factored in the dilution of the 24ct down to 18ct by adding 25% other metals etc Platinum by weight / volume still cheaper...
but I get the points made re waste and harder to work with ...but I still find it crazy that Patek can charge £ 18'000 more for a case in Platinum over gold !...
Last edited by TKH; 9th February 2020 at 17:54.
No it isn’t. Just using your own numbers: £26,000*950/750*1.34=£44131
You need to stop confusing weight and volume. A platinum watch is not physically smaller than a gold one but a kg platinum ingot IS smaller than a gold one.
OK i understand where you are coming from so can you work out the mm3 Volume of each of these 1kg bars ? to see what conclusion you reach on % difference between the 2.
https://www.royalmintbullion.com/Products/Bars/RMGCGKB
https://www.royalmintbullion.com/Products/Bars/RMGP1KG
Last edited by TKH; 9th February 2020 at 18:36.
This is quite a good explanation;
https://www.serendipitydiamonds.com/...pared-to-gold/
X x B = bullshit squared.
Any watch over about £200 costs what it costs and you either like it enough and can afford it or you don’t/can’t. Value is very tenuous over that level.
Thanks for the link. Answered all my questions
Thanks excellent and very well explained...
At todays money that means that ....raw material cost as follows
a Gold PP case weighing 100 grams is £ 3916
and the Platinum equivalent is 134 grams = £ 3228
So even if Platinum harder to work with charging a 25% premium over gold is well....extreme.
Last edited by TKH; 9th February 2020 at 22:18.
Dont forget the little diamond at 6 o clock on all Patek platinum pieces.. if you want to talk overpriced...
You can ask the same question about steel versus gold. The fact that there is a few hundred (max low thousands) pounds worth of gold in a watch will never justify the difference between steel and gold cases.
The simple answer is: because they can.
Someone who lies about the little things will lie about the big things too.
and they know that the people who really want it, will pay it.
In a nutshell, it's much more difficult to machine and finish a platinum case so there is extra cost in labour. However platinum has traditionally been a more expensive material gram for gram but the recently drop in prices are not reflected in most platinum watch prices.
Well, gold has traded at the same price or higher than platinum for well over ten years, wouldn't exactly call that recently.
Someone who lies about the little things will lie about the big things too.
nope... gold v platinum was at parity in January 2015.... 1:1....gold has pulled away since and is now 1:1.60 which is a massive difference ...
I said same or higher, that would sort of include parity, right?
The guidance above is correct in as much that platinum is generally purer than gold (as gold is too soft), and denser than gold, so a similar sized watch will have a lot more platinum in it than a gold equivalent. Also platinum is more difficult to work with.
However, the reality is the cost of the raw materials in these watches is minuscule relative to the price. So the above while true has very little to do with the price. Platinum is still marketed as a premium material across the entire jewellery market, so put simply they charge more because they can and someone will pay it.
Also fun fact, despite gold costing much more than platinum, platinum is much rarer. The gold price is driven by it's use as a store of wealth. The platinum price is driven by it's industrial use which takes up the vast majority of global production.
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