How to buy physical platinum with your exit already planned.

Platinum is not a smaller version of gold. Gold's price is set by monetary demand; platinum's is set mainly by industry, with autocatalysts, chemical processing, glassmaking and electronics consuming the bulk of annual supply, and jewellery taking much of the rest. When you buy platinum you are taking a position on industrial demand and on the concentrated mine supply of southern Africa — not on the monetary system.

That changes the role it can play. Platinum will not reliably behave as crisis insurance, because industrial demand contracts in exactly the downturns when insurance is needed. It is a cyclical precious metal with a supply constraint, and it should be sized and justified on that basis.

Platinum, like gold and silver, settles against a London auction benchmark administered by the LBMA and quoted per troy ounce. Our live prices page shows the current level next to the other metals. Every dealer price is that benchmark plus a premium, and platinum premiums run wider than gold's because the retail market is thinner.

Convert any quote to a percentage over spot before comparing. In a market this thin, the difference between a competitive and an expensive dealer is measured in whole percentage points, not tenths.

Platinum shares silver's tax problem, not gold's exemption. In most European jurisdictions the purchase carries VAT at the standard rate, which immediately puts a delivered position well under water. The workarounds mirror silver's: bonded or free-zone storage defers the tax until withdrawal, and a small number of jurisdictions treat certain formats more favourably.

Because the tax can exceed any plausible premium saving, the storage decision is effectively made for you in high-VAT countries: vaulted storage in a bonded facility is the cost-efficient structure, and home delivery is a conscious decision to pay the tax for possession. Confirm your own treatment with a local adviser.

The retail product range is narrow, which simplifies the decision. Large Swiss refiners produce 1oz and 100g bars with recognised hallmarks, and the major sovereign mints issue platinum versions of their flagship coins. Bars carry the lower premium; coins are more recognisable and, in some jurisdictions, carry tax treatment bars do not.

Avoid anything outside the recognised list. Exotic formats, small refiners without an LBMA-accredited hallmark, and collectible issues all add cost on entry and friction on exit in a market that already has fewer buyers.

Liquidity is platinum's structural weakness for a private holder. Fewer dealers quote a buy-back price, spreads are wider than gold's, and some platforms that sell platinum do not store it. Before funding anything, confirm in writing: does this dealer buy back, at what indicative spread, and how long does settlement take?

If you hold through a vault platform, check whether the metal can be sold back into the platform's own market at spot-linked pricing, as with gold. If you hold delivered metal, identify at least two dealers willing to quote before you need them.

Whatever your conviction on hydrogen, autocatalysts or African supply, platinum belongs at the edge of an allocation rather than the core. It is more volatile than gold, less liquid, and tax-disadvantaged in most of Europe — three reasons its weight should reflect conviction adjusted for friction, not conviction alone.

Review the thesis annually rather than the price weekly. Platinum trades on slow-moving industrial and regulatory themes; reacting to monthly price moves is how a long-term position becomes a series of poor trades.