It’s the stuff of western dramas where rugged men went looking for it in the mountains. It’s the shiny metal used in fancy jewelry, the highest honors for sports and the bars tucked away in heavily secured safes. And these days, gold’s appeal as a safe-haven investment has carried it to record prices.

Gold futures surged above $880 Tuesday to their highest level ever, not accounting for inflation, propelled higher by rising oil prices and a weak U.S. dollar.

An ounce of gold for February delivery climbed as high as $884 on the New York Mercantile Exchange, topping by almost $10 its previous record of $875 set in 1980, and later settled at $880.30, up $18.30. Gold for January delivery was close behind at $878.00.

Market analysts who have watched gold’s ascent weren’t surprised that gold reached a high. “I’m telling my friends,” said Ashraf Laidi, an analyst at CMC Markets. “I’ve told them for the past three years to invest in gold.”

Still, when adjusted for inflation, gold remains far short of the jaw-dropping levels of 28 years ago. An ounce of gold at $875 in 1980 would be worth $2,115 to $2,200 today. Read Full Story

Los Angeles based American Elements announced today the launch of AE Bullion™. The new product group will mint certified high purity coins and bars from approximately sixty advanced, rare and less common metals for short and long term physical investment. Metals include rhodium, tellurium, indium, hafnium, scandium and the 14 rare earth elements; all metals which have experienced dramatic world price increases in 2007.

Coins and bars will be minted from assayed materials produced by American Elements’ AE Metals™ high purity refining group. Coins will be available to hedge funds, currency reserves and exchange traded funds (ETFs) in order to establish tradable securities and to allow for exposure and controlled risk to commodity and industrial demand fluctuations. Also, private investors, collectors and hobbyists can now take direct physical title and possession to these metals with risk exposure equivalent to movements in the world spot price. (more…)

A rare hoard of Roman coins has been found in Bath at the site of a new city centre hotel. Around 150 coins have so far been unearthed in the run-up to work on the new Gainsborough Hotel and Thermal Spa.

But the Lower Borough Walls site is expected to yield more than 1,000 coins once the whole haul has been examined.

The find has been greeted with excitement by archaeologists because some of the coins are thought to date from the middle of the third century, one of the most poorly represented periods for coins in Britain.

The coins were discovered by Cotswold Archaeology while excavating the area around the site of the main pool of the new spa hotel, which is being created by Bath-based businessman Trevor Osborne. (more…)

Although Jack Raymond’s desk sits just outside a vault containing hundreds of safe deposit boxes, he insists he has no idea what clients of the Los Altos Vault & Safe Deposit Co. put inside their rented locked boxes.

“I don’t know what’s in there. I don’t need to know,” said Raymond, an account executive at the brick building on First Street. “What I don’t know I can’t divulge to anyone.”

Still, he does know that among what’s stored inside are some artifacts, art and various pieces of family estates.

Privacy is paramount at the downtown establishment that charges anywhere from $398 to $6,998 a year for use of the boxes, the smallest of which could be used to store jewelry and the largest of which - measuring 6 feet tall and 2 feet deep - could easily hold a large rug. Read Full Story