Colored Platinum

[chocopeluche]

Rolex gold colors have some platinum, thats why they don’t fade over time.

[Incroyable12]

Originally Posted by Guybrush

That's my understanding too---that white gold was invented as a more affordable alternative to platinum, back in the early 20thC. Of course, pm prices fluctuate a lot, and at the moment gold is about twice as expensive per ounce as platinum. I believe the last time platinum outperformed gold was pre-2008 financial crisis. (In a relatively short span around then, platinum shot from around 1k USD to almost 2k, and then crashed hard to around 600. Since then, like a lot of other things, it's vacillated but hasn't performed as well as gold.)

So, I don't know, maybe a yellow platinum to mimic gold makes sense in terms of affordability. But, then, Rolex still insists on charging more for platinum watches than gold ones.

When I did the math recently (and no one should ever trust me to do math, ever), accounting for the relative purities and masses of both metals, platinum watches should be about 85% as valuable as gold ones, just going by material values. (Ounce-for-ounce the metal is closer to 50% as valuable, but it takes more platinum to make a watch since it's purer and denser, so the platinum gains some ground.)

White gold watches are also noticeably more expensive at retail than yellow gold.

[EEpro]

Platinum is an industrial metal. Gold is money.

Aluminum and titanium were very valuable at one point also.

[DAC2]

Originally Posted by EEpro

Uranium comes in bright yellow and is extremely heavy.

HAHAHAHA ! yeah.
Good one. LOL

[fskywalker]

Originally Posted by Reikolexguy

Has the added benefit of making not just the entire watch glow, but the wearer too.


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[MILGAUSS88]

Found this on a website:
After all, you would logically think that a copper/platinum alloy would have a nice gold-like color and be malleable. (Copper, which is soft, generally produces alloys that are easy to form.) The problem, as metallurgists will tell you, is that alloys of copper and platinum have a permeable physical structure that is unstable, making them unsuitable for use in jewelry.

So it sounds like no, you cannot have rose platinum.

[Incroyable12]

Platinum is a very strange and fascinating metal.

[Guybrush]

Originally Posted by EEpro

Platinum is an industrial metal. Gold is money.

Aluminum and titanium were very valuable at one point also.

Yeah, I found it interesting to learn that in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, platinum was extremely popular for jewelry. I’d assumed that, like Palladium, it’s only recently been adopted for ornamental purposes but has mainly been an industrial material. Gold and silver have industrial purposes too, of course. (I worked in a factory over the summers when I was in high school and college and we made 24k gold electrical contact plates [they were called something like that, anyway] for the F-16 fighter jet—I’ll never forget getting to handle some of the spare metal before it got sent back: how warm and incredibly pliable it was.)

Anyway, the way things are going, within a decade or so all of this precious metal will be totally worthless and freshwater will be the only material worth a penny.
:-/

[os993]

I would love to see a platinum submariner


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[Incroyable12]

Originally Posted by Guybrush

Yeah, I found it interesting to learn that in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, platinum was extremely popular for jewelry. I’d assumed that, like Palladium, it’s only recently been adopted for ornamental purposes but has mainly been an industrial material. Gold and silver have industrial purposes too, of course. (I worked in a factory over the summers when I was in high school and college and we made 24k gold electrical contact plates [they were called something like that, anyway] for the F-16 fighter jet—I’ll never forget getting to handle some of the spare metal before it got sent back: how warm and incredibly pliable it was.)

Anyway, the way things are going, within a decade or so all of this precious metal will be totally worthless and freshwater will be the only material worth a penny.
:-/

One of the primary reasons platinum was recently only used for jewelry was because nobody knew how to melt and work it in any meaningful way prior to the discovery of the oxyacetylene torch in the mid-19th century. They used to use silver welded to yellow gold to mount diamonds before platinum became feasible to work with but silver had the unfortunate trait of tarnishing.

Once platinum became practical to work with there was an explosion of popularity in the Edwardian era that lasted until the late Art Deco/Industrial era right before WWII. Lots of fine Art Deco jewelry was made in platinum because you could really highlight the clean lines with the austere sheen of the metal.

It then fell into obscurity after WWII because it was deemed a strategic metal during the war. It's only recently that platinum has enjoyed a revival. However Rolex is one of the few companies that's consistently produced a platinum watch unlike other higher end brands. For example none of the Holy Trinity brands made platinum watches in the '60s and '70s. They all used white gold.

[HogwldFLTR]

Why would anyone take a metal that is 95% pure and contaminate it with other metals to discolor it. Platinum is more durable than gold is at the purity and last pretty much forever through multiple polishings. I'll take 95% pure Pt over 75% pure gold almost any day.

[sagalassos]

Originally Posted by Reikolexguy

Has the added benefit of making not just the entire watch glow, but the wearer too.


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