There must not be a great market to hedge platinum holdings. The margins have skyrocketed as platinum has fallen. There is a single year platinum half ounce eagle at Apmex with a 20% markup. Their one ounce eagles are at 15%. It almost seems like they're adding every penny of the drop to the margin as it happens. I get the scarcity of it all, but they must be hell bent to not take any downside on it if it's isn't hedged. Gold and silver eagles have fallen pretty far recently and those margins haven't budged. It must truly be an ugly supply situation on platinum eagles. A guy should probably just keep working on the gold and silver pile until some of that market drop in platinum is opened up to the consumer.
It looks like a numismatic take over of a precious metal. -No more are being made/have been made for awhile -Limited mintage - US Coin usable as legal tender Or It's that the profit is there being made, and there is no reason to lower prices. Like you mentioned with the silver eagles. ~ Also, with no current supply of new Platinum eagles, and the low mintage that was there already, I highly doubt that the prices are going to go down. I'd start treating it as if there was also a numismatic value on top of melt value.
The mint does still mint the 1 oz bullion platinum eagles as well as the collector proof versions they resumed the bullion APE last year. However they only minted 16,900 of the 1 oz bullion coins last year starting in March. And before last year not only the 1 oz but also the fractional bullion versions hadn't been had any minted since 2008. And they still aren't likely to ever resume minting the fractional ones. If you look at the mintage numbers of the bullion eagles they are also pretty low and I'd agree that the coins are likely held by those with expectations of a numismatic value. I'm sure there is plenty of people who paid a much higher price than platinum is going for now that won't sell their coins at a loss because they've no reason to. Can't really compare the ASE or AGE to the APE because the mintage numbers of the APE are just so low compared to the other two combined with the fact minting of the bullion 1 oz was only resumed last year. It's that finite supply that is driving the premium especially for the fractional bullion coins. http://platinumeagleguide.com/mintages/
