Platinum vs Gold. Price difference...

[lagori]

With platinum selling at about 10% discount to gold on commodities markets, can someone explain why jewelers charge significant premiums on settings made of platinum as compared to those made of gold?

Historically, platinum was selling at higher prices than gold. However, given that jewelers do not buy precious metals years in advance, shouldn't the price of the setting correctly reflect the cost of the metal?

Are jewelers taking advantage of customers' lack of knowledge of current metal pricing to make an extra-back and in many cases a few hundred extra-backs?

 

[YoungPapa]

lagori,

I'm not an expert on all aspects of the bench, but I do know that a platinum ring "weighs" 60% more than the same design made in 14kt gold. That being the case, a platinum ring is still going to be more expensive than one made of gold, even if the metals are trading for the same price.

Platinum is also more difficult to work with and requires special training and tools. Those additional human and shop resources get figured into the price.

With all of that said, we now have some designs on our website that are selling for almost the exact same price in platinum as gold. It just depends on how much the metal figures into the price (relative to labor charges, diamonds, sidestone setting cost, etc).

Hope this helps.

 

[MrsDrP]

I think James Allen answered you question correctly.

For example, a 950 platinum setting has 95% platinum and 5% of another alloy. This means that almost the entire weight of the setting is platinum. Whereas for 14kt white gold only has about 58% of the weight is actually gold and the rest is other alloys.

I hope that made sense.

 

[lagori]

Hi James and MrsDrP,

Thank you for your replies. They do make sense and you bring up valid points, which I hadn't considered. At the same time, I have noticed more "uniformity" among jewelers/different websites in terms of pricing settings in gold than those in platinum. I guess, this is more art than science.

Lagori

 

[Reptar]

I was wondering this too. The composition of platinum and gold rings have not changed, nor has the price difference between the two. So while 5-10 years ago the price of platinum was 2x that of gold, nowadays they are almost equal, yet there is still a substantial premium for a platinum ring.

 

[LibbyLA]

There's a higher percent platinum in a platinum ring than there is gold in a gold ring, platinum is denser so there's more metal by weight in a ring of a given design, and platinum is more difficult to work with.