Special to The Desert Sun

The precious metal platinum always strikes me as having the same connotation as, say, venture capital. Everyone has heard of it but almost nobody has actually seen it. As superlatives go, there aren't many that exceed platinum. There are platinum credit cards, platinum casino memberships and platinum blonds; the latter is mostly just another name for Marilyn Monroe.

All the same, platinum has long held a spot on the periodic table and used to be among the priciest of metals until gold zoomed by it in recent years. Today, platinum costs barely a third of gold and it has somewhat faded from view. Nonetheless, it remains quite spendy and occasionally shows up as fine jewelry in galleries like ours. Let's dig deeper.

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