It has been common to use the names of precious metals or other valuable materials for things to which you want to attach an aura of exclusivity. There are “gold” credit cards, “diamond” records, the gold/silver/bronze medals from the Olympics (the first instance of such a scheme in use?), and “platinum” collections or artists’ works.
Is there a generally ranking of the relative value of these materials? It’s obvious that silver ranks above bronze and gold above silver. The next step above gold seems to be platinum, and diamond apparently outranks platinum. Occasionally, I’ve also seen palladium and even rhodium used in such a manner.
The awarding for medals for competitions in gold, silver and bronze goes back to at least before 1855 in the US. I have some. And easily found cites on a database. Platinum, OTOH, was not a very precious metal back in the 19th century.
We’ve had a couple of threads on the curious perception of the value of titanium, which is often used to indicate a level far above the metal’s actual value:
Modern marketers are muddying the water a good bit here, I believe. For instance, “cobalt” this and that seems to be used to confer cachet sometimes, too. Like titanium, cobalt is an industrial metal which is expensive enough that you only use it for specialized purposes, but isn’t a “precious metal” (Seems to be about $30/lb, and was $17/lb in 2006.)
By 1860, aluminum was quoted at “36 shillings per pound” (about $9 US/pound). That would make it cheaper than silver by that date, at least I think. Or at least close.
After 1886, they would have REALLY gotten snickered at - that’s when the Hall-Héroult process was invented (independently, and essentially simultaneously by Hall in the US and Héroult in France). Once that got commercialized, the price dropped by a couple orders of magnitude, making aluminum cheap enough for widespread use.
I seem to remember that during the latest renovation, a new top of platinum was made and installed. It was stolen the very first night, since nobody thought of the need to secure it while the scaffolding was still in place. I can’t find a quote for it anywhere. I am just making up stuff or did this really happen the way I remember it?
oh, and tungsten seems to be the new platinum. For wedding bands, at least.
Come to think of it, isn’t there an “Iron Ring” tradition among Canadian engineers?
Why was platinum not a precious metal in the 1800s? Did they have so much of it, or was it just that it wasn’t well enough known to have intrinsic value? I do remember reading about some demonstration strikes for new U.S. coin designs, back then, being made from platinum.
Although it was known to the ancient world, it wasn’t really isolated and recognized as a separate metal until the 18th century (at one time it was thought to be an alloy of gold and iron). According to this, it started becoming popular for jewelry uses in the late 19th century, partially because of improved techniques for refining and working it (hardness and high melting point made it difficult to work with):
I seem to recall, I think it was in one of James Burke’s “Connections” episodes, that the Spanish used platinum in the alloys of their cannons made in South America. Anyway, the “gotcha” was that the value of the junk platinum that they though was worthless exceeded the value of the treasure they brought back (in modern values I guess). I can’t find a cite, and did Burke have a habit of playing loose with some facts to make a point, so don’t place any value on this probably flawed remembering.
ETA: It might have been platinum sand used to cast the cannon, not as an alloy.
