The steady decline of platinum has been well documented over the last half decade or so. Reasons for this decline are few and far between, but since its value plummeted significantly  in 2008, the “rich man’s gold” has yet to recover.

Andrew Hecht, a commodities and equity writer at Seeking Alpha, notes that the historically pricier precious metal can now claim to be the more affordable precious metal, when compared to both gold and platinum’s sister metal palladium.

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“As the monthly chart highlights, the price of platinum has been steadily depreciating since trading at $1,918.50 per ounce in August 2011. By July 2014, the price had dropped to $1,514.30, and that was the last time that platinum traded above the $1,500 level,” Hecht writes. 

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The industrial market has veered away from platinum toward what has become a more useful commodity, palladium, whose surge was previously reported here on Coin World.

Rhodium has also made a significant splash with those in the valuing industry, dominating much of the Asian market over the last two years.

Expect this trend to continue for platinum, which hasn’t traded higher than gold in nearly three years, and there’s no indication that it will bounce back anytime soon, according to the analyst.