Gold, Silver, Platinum and Palladium: Four Precious Metals, Four Very Different Markets

Four metals share a label and little else. In 2025 industry took about 58% of silver demand and roughly 6% of gold’s; more than 80% of palladium demand has been automotive, and one country mined about 71% of the world’s platinum. We set out where each metal goes after it is refined, where it comes from, what happens to it after its first use, and the order in which GoldSilverPortfolio’s framework asks the question.

Published September 10, 2026 · Updated October 20, 2026 · 16 min read

Key Takeaways

• Gold’s 2025 demand was 4,999.4 tonnes excluding OTC: investment 2,175.3 tonnes, jewellery fabrication 1,638.0, central banks and other institutions 863.3, and technology 322.8 — about 6.5% of the total. Gold’s marginal buyer is an investor, a jeweller or a central bank rather than a factory.
• Silver’s 2025 demand was 1,130.6 million ounces, of which industrial fabrication took 657.4 million — about 58%. Silver keeps a monetary history and carries an industrial demand base at the same time.
• Platinum has no single defining end market. The World Platinum Investment Council puts automotive demand at 36–44% of the total across the last five years, industrial uses at 23–35% and jewellery at 24–30%. Palladium is the opposite: more than 80% of its demand has been automotive.
• Supply is concentrated where demand is narrow. On USGS 2025 estimates South Africa mined about 71% of the world’s platinum, and Russia (44%) and South Africa (37%) together supplied about 81% of palladium. Gold’s largest producer, China, is 11.5% of world output, and the top five producers together are 41%.
• About 222,600 tonnes of gold have ever been mined and almost all of it still exists. Silver dispersed through electronics is often too costly to recover, and roughly a quarter of platinum supply over the five years to 2024 came from recycling. Annual mine production is not the same thing as metal available to investors.

Gold, silver, platinum and palladium are usually grouped under one label. All four are relatively scarce, trade on global metals markets, can be refined into high-purity bars and coins, and are available to investors as physical metal and through financial products. That is roughly where the similarities end. Gold has been money, jewellery and a store of wealth for thousands of years and is still held as a reserve asset by central banks. Silver shares much of that monetary history, but industry now takes more than half of annual silver demand. Platinum is used across vehicles, jewellery, chemical processing, electronics, medicine and hydrogen and fuel-cell applications. Palladium is narrower again: its modern market has been dominated by emissions control on petrol vehicles.

The shared label does not tell an investor whether platinum and palladium play the same role, or carry the same weight, as gold. That is a separate question, and it is the one this article sets out the evidence for. Gold and platinum-group figures are in metric tonnes and troy ounces; silver figures are in millions of troy ounces (Moz), at 32,150.7 troy ounces to the tonne. Demand figures are full-year 2025 as published in early 2026. Mine-production figures are the United States Geological Survey’s 2025 estimates from Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, which is the same vintage the World Atlas uses, so the two agree.

Four Neighbours on the Periodic Table

The four metals occupy an unusually tidy part of the periodic table. Palladium, atomic number 46, sits directly beside silver, atomic number 47. Directly beneath them sit platinum, 78, and gold, 79. Silver and gold belong to Group 11, palladium and platinum to Group 10, and all four are d-block metals. Platinum and palladium are two of the six platinum-group metals, or PGMs — the others are iridium, osmium, rhodium and ruthenium.

Those properties are most of the reason the four markets diverged. Gold is dense, extraordinarily resistant to corrosion, easy to work and visually distinctive, which suited it to storing value. Silver tarnishes and is softer, but its electrical properties made it valuable to modern manufacturing; the Royal Society of Chemistry notes that it is also “the best reflector of visible light known”. Platinum is denser than gold, corrosion-resistant and an exceptional catalyst, and it melts at 1,768.2°C — which is why it arrived late in European metalwork despite being ancient. Palladium is lighter than platinum but likewise corrosion-resistant and catalytically active.

Two Ancient Metals, and Two That Industry Discovered

Gold and silver became valuable long before anyone understood atomic structure. The Royal Society of Chemistry records that “by 2000 BC the Egyptians began mining gold”, and that slag heaps near ancient workings in Turkey and Greece place the start of silver mining at around 3000 BC. Coinage followed: the first Lydian coins, struck in about 640 BC in what is now Turkey, were made of electrum, a natural gold-silver alloy, and the first coins of pure gold came later, under Croesus, who reigned from 561 to 547 BC.

Platinum’s human history is older than is often assumed, though its time as money was brief. People on the Pacific coast of South America were working platinum around 2,000 years ago, as burial goods show. Platinum has also been reported in ancient Egyptian goldwork, and that case is more complicated than it is usually told: the archaeometallurgical literature finds that the platinum-group inclusions in Egyptian gold are alloys dominated by osmium, iridium and ruthenium, carried passively into the metal from alluvial deposits rather than deliberately worked. Platinum only became widely known in Europe in the eighteenth century, after Antonio de Ulloa encountered it in Spanish America in 1735 and the Royal Society began discussing it; malleable platinum was not produced until 1789. Its one spell as money came soon after: the Russian Empire struck more than 1.3 million platinum roubles from 1828, and withdrew the whole coinage in 1845. Palladium is a metal of the scientific age entirely — William Hyde Wollaston isolated it from platinum in 1803, and its economic importance arrived much later.

From ancient money to modern industry

• c. 3000 BC Silver mining begins: Slag heaps near ancient workings in Turkey and Greece date the start of silver mining (Royal Society of Chemistry).
• c. 2000 BC Egyptian gold mining: Gold had been worked since prehistoric times; by 2000 BC the Egyptians were mining it.
• c. 640 BC The first Lydian coins: Struck in electrum, a natural gold-silver alloy. Coins of pure gold came under Croesus, 561–547 BC.
• c. AD 1 Platinum worked in South America: Burial goods from the Pacific coast show platinum being worked around 2,000 years ago. Europe would not understand the metal for another 1,700 years.
• 1735–1789 Platinum reaches Europe: Antonio de Ulloa encounters the metal in Spanish America in 1735; malleable platinum is first produced in 1789. Its 1,768°C melting point had defeated earlier metalworkers.
• 1803 Palladium isolated: William Hyde Wollaston separates palladium from crude platinum and names it after the asteroid Pallas.
• 1974–75 Catalytic converters mandated: US regulation puts catalytic converters on passenger vehicles, creating the demand that would come to define the palladium market.
• 1980s The three-way catalyst: Platinum or palladium for oxidation, rhodium for NOx reduction — still the mainstay of petrol emissions control, and the reason the two metals substitute for each other.

Where the Metal Goes After It Is Refined

The clearest way to see how differently these four markets work is to ask what happens to the metal once it has been mined and refined. The answers are not variations on a theme.

Gold: investment, jewellery and reserves

Gold’s industrial uses are real — electronics depend on its conductivity and corrosion resistance — but they are a small share of the whole. The World Gold Council recorded 4,999.4 tonnes of gold demand in 2025 on its measure excluding over-the-counter investment. Investment was 2,175.3 tonnes, jewellery fabrication 1,638.0 tonnes, central banks and other institutions 863.3 tonnes, and technology 322.8 tonnes. Central-bank buying was 21% below 2024’s 1,092.4 tonnes but still historically elevated; we set out that longer pattern in our look at record central-bank buying and revisit it in where central banks now keep their gold.

Silver: half precious metal, half industrial input

Silver is tied far more closely to the physical economy. Total silver demand in 2025 was 1,130.6 Moz, of which industrial fabrication took 657.4 Moz — about 58%, and the first post-pandemic decline in that series. Electrical and electronics applications alone were 449.5 Moz, including 186.6 Moz of photovoltaics. Silver has not stopped being a precious metal: coin and bar demand was 217.7 Moz and jewellery 189.3 Moz. We walk through the full supply-and-demand bridge, and why a deficit is not a shortage, in are we using more silver than we mine?, and take the industrial side further in silver’s industrial demand story.

6.5% vs 58% Industry’s share of gold demand, against industry’s share of silver demand, 2025. This single contrast is most of the difference between the two markets. Gold’s technology demand of 322.8 tonnes is about 6.5% of the 4,999.4 tonnes bought that year; silver’s industrial fabrication of 657.4 Moz is about 58% of 1,130.6 Moz. Both are our arithmetic on the publishers’ own tonnages — neither the World Gold Council nor the Silver Institute prints the percentage. Note that “small” here means small as a share: 322.8 tonnes of gold is a very large absolute market.

That combination is why silver does not behave consistently like either of the things it is. The World Gold Council — which is funded by gold miners, and whose paper argues gold’s case against silver — describes silver as behaving “as a hybrid – part precious metal and part industrial metal – with higher volatility and greater equity sensitivity during drawdowns”. The Silver Institute, from the other side of the same trade, reports that silver correlates strongly with gold but also, frequently, with copper and the broader commodities complex. Two industry bodies with opposing interests describe the same dual character.

Platinum: no single defining end market

Platinum is often described simply as an industrial metal — GoldSilverPortfolio’s own Learning section on platinum and palladium has said so, and we have corrected it alongside this article. The demand data are more mixed than that description implies. The World Platinum Investment Council publishes the ranges below for the last five years; its uses run from catalytic converters and chemical processing to jewellery, electronics, medical devices and fuel cells. Hydrogen is present but still small: WPIC’s “hydrogen stationary and other” line was 65 koz in 2025, up 63% year on year from 40 koz, against total platinum demand of about 8,400 koz.

See also our 9 September analysis of the World Platinum Investment Council’s latest Platinum Quarterly, Platinum’s Deficit Streak May Be Ending. Should Investors Still Care?. Its September edition revises 2025 total platinum demand to 8,671 koz and 2025 hydrogen demand to 71 koz, and forecasts a 265 koz surplus for 2026 in place of the fourth consecutive deficit projected in May.

Platinum therefore sits between silver and palladium in character. Industrial conditions matter a great deal, but no single end market defines it.

Palladium: the automotive specialist

Palladium is far more concentrated. More than 80% of its demand has been associated with the automotive industry — Johnson Matthey, a PGM refiner and autocatalyst manufacturer, describes the market as “dominated by its extensive use in automotive emissions control, specifically emissions control used in gasoline vehicles”. Electronics, chemical catalysts, dental alloys and jewellery take the rest. What moves palladium, in other words, is vehicle production, emissions rules and the substitution between platinum and palladium that the three-way catalyst makes possible — not monetary policy or central-bank reserve decisions. We work through the PGM investment case, the vehicles and the sizing question in our platinum and palladium guide.

Where the Four Metals Come From

Demand is half the story. Supply differs just as sharply, and it is here that the four markets separate most cleanly. Gold mining is dispersed: China, Russia, Australia, Canada and the United States were the leading producers in 2025 in that order, and together they accounted for 41% of world output. China, the largest, was 380 tonnes of an estimated 3,300 — 11.5%. USGS lists thirteen individual gold-producing countries and an “other countries” line of about 1,000 tonnes, which is on its own nearly three times China’s share. Platinum and palladium are the opposite case.

Silver sits in between, with a complication of its own: most of it is not mined for its own sake. The Royal Society of Chemistry notes that silver is “mostly extracted from lead-zinc, copper, gold and copper-nickel ores as a by-product of mining for these metals”, and the market data put a number on it. In 2025 the share of global silver mine supply coming from primary silver mines fell to a new low of 26%, leaving roughly three-quarters as by-product output of 625.5 Moz. A rising silver price does not cause a copper or zinc miner to lift production much, which is why silver supply responds to price differently from a commodity mined principally for itself. Mexico remains the largest producer at 6,300 tonnes, about 24.2% of the world total.

Concentration is also why PGM supply is sensitive to things that have nothing to do with metal prices. USGS attributes recent South African production declines to “declining prices, higher costs associated with deep-level mining, labor disputes, and ongoing disruptions to the supply of electricity”. Russian export routes, sanctions and single-complex operating risk do the same work on the palladium side. Country-by-country output for all four metals can be compared on the World Atlas, and the question of why the rarest of them is not the dearest is taken up directly in gold versus platinum.

Mined Is Not the Same as Consumed

There is one more difference, and it is the one investors most often miss: what happens to the metal after its first use. Gold is the extreme case. The World Gold Council estimates that about 222,600 tonnes of gold have been mined throughout history, roughly two-thirds of it since 1950, and adds that “since gold is virtually indestructible, this means that almost all of this metal is still around in one form or another”. A Roman coin can become jewellery, jewellery can become a bar, and a bar can sit in a vault for decades and return to the market. Gold is mined, but comparatively little of it is consumed. The hedge in “virtually” is real — gold genuinely lost to landfill, shipwrecks and plating losses does not come back — but the direction is not in doubt.

222,600 t All the gold ever mined, as at the end of the second quarter of 2026. The World Gold Council revises this estimate quarterly, so it carries a date rather than being a fixed constant; its end-2025 figure was 219,891 tonnes. Set against annual mine production of roughly 3,300 tonnes, new supply adds on the order of 1.5% a year to a stock that has been accumulating for five thousand years. That ratio — vast existing stock against small annual addition — is itself one of the things that separates gold from the other three.

Silver behaves differently. Large quantities remain above ground as bullion, coins, jewellery and silverware, but enormous quantities have also been distributed in tiny amounts through electronics and industrial products. The Silver Institute’s work on above-ground stocks describes a large share of historical mine production as “theoretically recoverable” yet “unavailable” in practice: silver that “cannot be economically recovered due to price or other considerations”, because it is “either too widely dispersed or the life-cycle of the product in which silver is incorporated is paramount”.

Platinum and palladium follow a third model. Significant quantities spend years embedded in catalytic converters and industrial equipment, then return through scrappage and refining. This is not a marginal flow: the World Platinum Investment Council puts recycling at an average of 24% of total platinum supply over the five years to 2024. Vehicle scrappage rates, collection economics and the platinum content of the converters being retired therefore matter to the PGM market in a way they do not to gold.

The Markets Are Not Equally Deep

The ownership choices look similar across all four: coins or bars held directly, professionally vaulted metal, exchange-traded products, and futures for professionals. The practical differences grow as you move away from gold. The London market clears more than 20 million ounces of gold and more than 200 million ounces of silver on an average day, according to the LBMA; it publishes no comparable public daily series for platinum or palladium, which is itself informative. Sovereign mints across the world produce widely recognised gold bullion, central banks hold the metal, and large institutional markets operate in London, New York, Switzerland and Asia.

Silver has an enormous retail bullion market, though an equivalent dollar value takes up far more space and retail premiums can be higher. Platinum bullion is readily available — the Royal Canadian Mint has produced a 99.95% Platinum Maple Leaf since 1988 and the United States Mint issues the American Platinum Eagle — but the physical market is smaller. Palladium is thinner again: the Palladium Maple Leaf has been issued but is not in the Mint’s current bullion line-up, while the American Palladium Eagle is in production, and dealer liquidity in either can be considerably thinner than in gold. Live prices for all four are on our platinum and palladium pages.

The structure through which a metal is owned changes the risks as much as the choice of metal does. Direct physical ownership, allocated vaulted bullion and an exchange-traded product solve different problems and carry different combinations of custody, liquidity, cost and counterparty exposure — which we cover in how to hold your metals and in physical gold versus gold ETFs.

The Order in Which the Question Gets Asked

A precious-metals allocation does not have to be divided equally among four metals, and the evidence above is the reason. Where the stated objective is wealth preservation, diversification or reduced exposure to financial-system risk, GoldSilverPortfolio’s framework starts the analysis with gold: it is the one of the four whose demand base and market depth depend least on industrial consumption, the only one held as a reserve asset by central banks, and the one with the longest monetary history.

Silver is the second question. It keeps the monetary and investment characteristics and adds an industrial demand base that, on the 2025 figures, is the majority of the total — a second driver that does not move with the first. Platinum and palladium are separate questions rather than smaller versions of the first two: their prices answer to vehicle production, emissions rules, substitution and a supply base concentrated in one or two countries. How the gold and silver weights themselves are set is a different question again, and we take it up in when to adjust a gold and silver allocation.

1. Gold — where the framework starts: The demand base least dependent on industry (technology was about 6.5% of 2025 demand), the deepest market, the only central-bank reserve asset of the four, and the most dispersed supply. This is a sequence of analysis, not a target mix, and it sets no percentages.
2. Silver — the second question: Monetary history and investment demand, plus an industrial base that was about 58% of 2025 demand. The second driver is what makes silver behave unlike gold in some periods and unlike an industrial commodity in others.
3. Platinum — a separate question, on its own drivers: Rarer than gold at the mine by roughly nineteen to one, with demand split across automotive, industrial, jewellery and investment, and about 71% of mine supply from a single country. None of that makes it a smaller version of gold.
4. Palladium — the narrowest exposure of the four: More than 80% of demand has been automotive, and two countries account for about 81% of mine supply. Owning it is an exposure to vehicle production, emissions technology, substitution and recycling.

The shared label is not by itself a reason to hold platinum or palladium, and it is not a reason to rule them out. It is simply not the question the framework asks. Where an investor does decide to hold them, we discuss position sizing in our platinum and palladium guide; the exact mix remains an individual decision that depends on objectives, risk tolerance, time horizon, storage capacity and everything else in the portfolio.

When a Small Holding Does Not Need a Grand Thesis

There is a reason someone might own a little platinum or palladium that allocation models do not capture: they find the metals interesting. A small holding can be part investment, part education and part curiosity — and a metal you can pick up is easier to learn from than a line on a chart. Holding one is a reason to follow South African platinum output, Russian palladium supply, catalytic-converter demand, recycling economics and the development of hydrogen and fuel-cell applications.

I keep less than 1% of my own overall portfolio in the “other” precious metals. It is not there because I believe every portfolio needs that allocation, and it is not a recommendation that anyone copy it. I own a small amount because I find these metals — and the markets behind them — interesting.

Dan, founder of GoldSilverPortfolio, on his own holdings

A holding kept for interest and a holding expected to perform a portfolio function are two different things, and the difference is checkable: one has a stated job in the allocation and the other does not. That is a reasonable basis for a small position and a poor one for a large one.

Four Precious Metals, Not Four Versions of Gold

The term “precious metals” is useful, but it conceals as much as it explains. Gold is an investment asset, a jewellery metal and a global reserve asset at once, and industry barely touches it. Silver keeps its monetary heritage while industry takes 58% of it. Platinum is scarce at the mine, concentrated in supply and diversified in demand. Palladium is a specialised catalyst whose economics are tied to the car. They sit almost beside one another on the periodic table; they do not occupy the same place in a portfolio.

That is why the framework asks what an allocation is for before it asks which metal fills it. Ordered that way, gold is the first question and silver the second; platinum and palladium are separate questions an investor may or may not reach. The final decision belongs to the individual investor. For a market-data view of all four across the year, Jeffrey Christian of CPM Group publishes annual gold, silver and PGM yearbooks that sit alongside the industry-body sources used here.

Sources and Methodology

Gold demand figures are the World Gold Council’s, compiled by Metals Focus, from Gold Demand Trends Q4 and Full Year 2025 (January 2026), quoted on the measure excluding OTC investment; the above-ground stock estimate is from the Council’s Goldhub data page and is revised quarterly, so it is dated here to end-Q2 2026. Silver figures are Metals Focus’s for the Silver Institute, World Silver Survey 2026 (April 2026), where “industrial” excludes photography. Platinum demand ranges are the World Platinum Investment Council’s published five-year ranges; because Metals Focus revises the series between quarterly editions, recomputing those ranges on the latest vintage shifts each by about a percentage point, and we have therefore quoted WPIC’s own published figures rather than our own recomputation. Mine-production figures are USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 (February 2026), 2025 estimates; the percentage shares are our arithmetic against USGS’s rounded world totals, because USGS publishes tonnages only. The 6.5% and 58% demand shares are likewise our arithmetic on the publishers’ own figures.

Conflicts of interest, stated plainly, because most of the demand data in this article come from interested parties. The World Gold Council is a membership body funded by gold-mining companies and is affiliated with Metals Focus; the paper quoted on silver’s hybrid behaviour argues gold’s case against silver. The Silver Institute is a silver-industry association whose funding companies are silver miners and refiners; the above-ground-stocks report cited was conducted for it by Precious Metals Insights and its data run to end-2023. The World Platinum Investment Council is funded by platinum producers. Johnson Matthey is a PGM refiner, autocatalyst manufacturer and metal trader, and is the largest commercial beneficiary of autocatalyst demand. The United States Geological Survey and the Royal Society of Chemistry are the two disinterested sources used here; the RSC is cited for chemistry and history only, and not for demand shares, because its platinum page carries an older autocatalyst share that the current market data do not support. GoldSilverPortfolio’s founder holds platinum and palladium amounting to less than 1% of his own portfolio, as disclosed above, and the site earns commissions from disclosed affiliate partnerships with bullion dealers. Neither is a recommendation, and no figure in this article depends on either.

Primary sources

• World Gold Council — Gold Demand Trends: Q4 and Full Year 2025, January 2026: total demand of 5,002.3 t including OTC and 4,999.4 t excluding it; investment 2,175.3 t; jewellery fabrication 1,638.0 t; central banks and other institutions 863.3 t; technology 322.8 t; mine production 3,671.6 t
• World Gold Council — “How much gold has been mined?”, Goldhub data page, as at end-Q2 2026: about 222,600 tonnes mined throughout history, roughly two-thirds of it since 1950, and the “virtually indestructible” formulation quoted above
• World Gold Council — “Gold the safe haven versus silver the wildcard”, 18 March 2026: silver as a hybrid with higher volatility and greater equity sensitivity during drawdowns
• Metals Focus for the Silver Institute — World Silver Survey 2026, April 2026: total demand 1,130.6 Moz; industrial fabrication 657.4 Moz; electrical and electronics 449.5 Moz of which photovoltaics 186.6 Moz; physical investment 217.7 Moz; jewellery 189.3 Moz; silverware 42.1 Moz; photography 24.2 Moz; primary-mine share of mine supply 26%, a new low, against non-primary output of 625.5 Moz
• The Silver Institute — Market Trend Report: Price Sensitivity of Above-Ground Silver Stocks, conducted by Precious Metals Insights, February 2025 (data to end-2023): the distinction between theoretically recoverable and practically unavailable silver
• World Platinum Investment Council — Demand Drivers, and Platinum Quarterly Q4 2025 (4 March 2026): automotive 36–44%, industrial 23–35%, jewellery 24–30% and investment −8% to 14% of total platinum demand over the last five years; hydrogen stationary and other demand of 40 koz in 2024 and 65 koz in 2025
• World Platinum Investment Council — “Automotive Recycling Supply”, 60 Seconds in Platinum, 8 October 2025: recycling at an average of 24% of total platinum supply over the five years to 2024
• Johnson Matthey — Palladium market page and PGM Market Report, May 2026: automotive emissions control on petrol vehicles as the dominant source of palladium demand
• United States Geological Survey — Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Gold, Silver, and Platinum-Group Metals, February 2026 (2024 actuals and 2025 estimates): world gold production about 3,300 t with the top five producers at 41%; world silver production about 26,000 t with Mexico at 6,300 t; world platinum production about 170 t with South Africa at 120 t; world palladium production about 190 t with Russia at 84 t and South Africa at 70 t; the six platinum-group metals; and the South African electricity, cost and labour disruptions noted above
• Royal Society of Chemistry — Periodic Table element pages for palladium (46), silver (47), platinum (78) and gold (79): atomic numbers, groups, periods, densities and melting points; Egyptian gold mining by 2000 BC; Turkish and Greek silver workings around 3000 BC; Lydian electrum coinage around 640 BC and pure gold coinage under Croesus, 561–547 BC; platinum worked on the Pacific coast of South America 2,000 years ago; Ulloa in 1735; Wollaston’s isolation of palladium in 1803
• Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC Education) — “The evolution of catalytic converters”: catalytic converters introduced in 1974 and mandated on US vehicles from 1975, and the three-way catalyst of the 1980s
• Junk and Pernicka et al. — “Platinum group placer minerals in ancient gold artifacts”: the platinum-group inclusions in Egyptian goldwork as osmium-, iridium- and ruthenium-dominated alloys incorporated passively during extraction from placer material
• London Bullion Market Association — Clearing Data: daily averages of more than 20 million ounces of gold and more than 200 million ounces of silver cleared in London; no comparable public daily series is published for platinum or palladium
• Th. Rehren — “Minting of Platinum Roubles”, Part IV, Platinum Metals Review 50(3), 2006, pp. 120–129 (Johnson Matthey; DOI 10.1595/147106706X128890): the decision of April 1828 to issue platinum roubles, more than 1.3 million 3-rouble pieces struck from 1828 to 1845, wear from circulation on the surviving coins, and the demonetisation of 1845
• Royal Canadian Mint and United States Mint — bullion product listings: the 99.95% Platinum Maple Leaf, first issued 1988; the Palladium Maple Leaf, issued but absent from the current bullion line-up; the American Platinum Eagle and the American Palladium Eagle