Is above-ground platinum scrap a threat to the platinum price?
Platinum has the highest price. This precious metal is also more expensive than white gold because it is purer than white gold, more malleable, and denser, so it takes more metal to make a ring. We have not yet had aluminium prices metal come to us with this metal. Most often with silver and aluminum. After all, the prices are pretty good right now.
You know, that platinum price is high and known as a precious metal and more expensive than white gold because it is purer than white gold, denser so more metal is needed to make a ring, Platinum is more difficult to work with and most often requires really fine craftsmen, increasing the labor costs. I’ve learned a lot talking to experts from PPM (https://www.pacificpreciousmetals.com/)
The whole scrap story, on the jewellery front, is an area that I think most analysts, and I’d even put myself in this category in spite of scrap being very much at the forefront of our field research, have underestimated how much scrap could potentially come back into the market. You are quite right, GFMS was measuring scrap in the gold industry as early as 1980, when gold prices peaked. The above-ground stock and the mobilisation of the above-ground stock are crucial. As these stocks start to build up and come back to the market at the right price and through the right collection mechanism, they can have a profound influence. Just one metric that gives you a very good feel for this is the metric of South African production falling by 400 000 oz in 2008. Jewellery scrap, that is scrap with jewellery origin, increased by about 400 000 oz. So all the fear about lower South African production and the price impact we saw at the start of 2008 could be dissipated because of the response of r
