Platinum history in a nutshell
Platinum has just soared in a particular way. Platinum price is up severely after rallying sharply last week. All this while the volume is huge, and the open interest on the futures market is also very significant. Palladium jumped higher as well, but it is the rally in platinum that got heads turning. In other words, platinum is currently hot.
As platinum is rising, here is a little piece of its history. Platina – means tiny silver in Spanish and the name has an interesting origin. When Spanish conquistadors first encountered this mysterious white metal in Colombian rivers during the 16th century, they were actually quite annoyed by it.
They were there hunting for gold, and this silvery stuff kept getting mixed in with their precious finds. Since it looked like silver but was much harder to work with (requiring much higher temperatures to melt), they dismissively called it “platina del Pinto” – meaning “little silver of the Pinto River.”
The Spanish considered it so worthless that they often threw it back into the rivers, and there were even laws requiring it to be mixed with gold to prevent counterfeiting!
It wasn’t until the 18th century that European scientists realized this “annoying impurity” was actually rarer (and in for some more valuable) than gold itself.
