Platinum has tremendous appeal to the “aspirational” consumer, according to The Platinum Guild’s Terry Sisco. Sisco presented “Delivering the Ultimate Platinum Experience” to a room full of jewelers on Thursday afternoon during the JCK Show’s educational sessions. “Kids graduating today want right away what their parents worked 40 years to acquire,” he told the crowd.

He offered jewelers some tips on how to sell the most precious of metals. Be sure to press the purity issue–platinum is 90-95% pure and other alloys are mixed in only for durability, but even then those metals are members of the plat family. The natural white color of platinum maximizes the whiteness of colorless diamonds. Platinum is the rarest precious metal; on average, 88 tons of platinum are mined annually for jewelry versus 2,700 tons of karat gold. “That means that if you give her platinum, you love her twice as much,“ joked Sisco. And of course, platinum is naturally hypoallergenic.

Other tips Sisco offered: Romance the fine patina that platinum acquires over time (Says Sisco, “You wouldn’t want to wipe off wear marks from your grandmother’s ring, would you?”). Plus, whenever you polish white gold, some of the metal is lost, whereas with platinum, that doesn’t happen. “Twenty percent of your inventory is driving 80% of your business,” says Sisco. “Key in on that ‘most-wanted merchandise’ or 20%, and lose the other 80%.”

JCK