[topher515]

I'm not familiar with how pricing precious metals works, but it looks like, as of this moment, gold is priced about 2x more than platinum[1]! Presumably these prices have quite a bit of variability, and gold and platinum switch places sometimes? (Although your main point about gallium being _way_ cheaper than gold/platinum holds for sure.)

[1] https://www.suissegold.eu/en/charts/platinum

[colechristensen]

Ah, hm, updated knowledge. From about 1999 to 2008 platinum traded at about twice the price of gold. They were roughly equal until 2015 then gold started trading about double the price of platinum.

Platinum has quite a few industrial uses, gold is getting more attention as a store of value lately, probably lots of other more complex market forces going on as well.

[foobarian]

Another neat point for gallium is that it's fairly non-toxic, easy to get, and a ton of fun to play with. You can melt it with your hands!