By Davd Ganz for Numsmatic News

Hi-o Silver! After years of being thought of as a backwater of precious metals, and even threatened with demotion to an industrial metal, silver is back in the spotlight. The effect on common date silver coins couldn’t be more welcome to collectors and investors, and is helping the market as a whole.

Up more than 29 percent over last year’s $13.38 average, silver has increased almost four times its 2003 average of $4.87 a troy ounce and three times its 1998 price average of $5.54 an ounce.

Here’s how the difference plays out on a common circulated Morgan dollar that contains .7734 troy ounces of metal. At $5.54 an ounce, a silver dollar has about $4.42 worth of bullion. A quarter has .18084 troy ounces worth of precious metal, worth just about a dollar. At the current $17.38 average, the silver dollar’s metal reserve is $13.44 and the quarter is about $3.15.

As gold crossed $1,000 and platinum $2,175, silver went over the important psychological barrier of $20 an ounce before retreating to profit takers. That approaches the 1979 average of $21.79, which is otherwise understood only in the context of the Hunt Brothers run on the silver market.

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By Jeff Starck for COIN WORLD

When trying to determine value of medals, many factors should be considered, which can sometimes overwhelm new collectors.

Medals are a very broad field, and condition and rarity, generally the keys to coin prices, are just among the first of several factors to consider with medals.

“The field of medals is so broad that it’s tough to talk about it as a monolith,” according to John Kraljevich, an expert in coins and exonumia. “Renaissance portrait pieces and ’so-called dollars’ have nearly nothing in common though both fall under the grand rubric of ‘medals’ – so it’s easy for a beginner to get overwhelmed within such a massive field.”

Coin World asked several experts to weigh in on what factors affect medal prices and how valuing medals is different than pricing coins.

Collecting by topic

Because the field of medal collecting is so broad, collectors like to categorize and collect by topic.

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Compared to some other countries, the United States uses bills rather than coins for relatively small denominations. The smallest Euro bill is for 5 Euros (approximately $8) and the smallest British bill is for 5 pounds (approximately $10). However, even through there have been several attempts to introduce a $1 coin — and starting last year, the U.S. mint has issued new one dollar coins — a very large (76% to 13%) majority of the public prefers a dollar bill to a coin.

Another idea that has been proposed from time to time has been the abolition of the penny. By more than a two-to-one majority (56% to 24%) most people oppose this idea also.

These are some of the results from the latest Harris Poll of 2,513 adults surveyed online between March 11 and 18, 2008 by Harris Interactive®.

While there is a strong reluctance to abolish the penny or to use $1 coins, a large majority (68% to 16%) is in favor of using more colors in bills of different denominations to make it easier to tell them apart. This is, of course, normal practice in many other countries, but until recently all U.S. currency bills in all denominations were green.

Other interesting findings in this Harris Poll include:

* While majorities of people of all ages want to keep the penny, support for abolishing it is much stronger among the more affluent and weaker among people with lower incomes. Only 16 percent of people with household incomes of less than $35,000 favor abolishing the penny, compared to 32 percent of people with household incomes of $75,000 or more;

* Also, men are much more in favor of abolishing the penny than women are (34% versus 14%). This probably has something to do with carrying change in a pocket compared to in a purse. Yet, almost one in five men (18%) say they would prefer a $1 coin compared to just 8 percent of women;

* Only 25 percent of adults have seen one of the new $1 coins even though they have been in circulation since 2007. Four coins were issued that year and four more are being issued each year until each US president is depicted on a coin

* These coins seem to be less used in the East than in other regions as just 19 percent of Easterners have seen one. (more…)

By John Browne for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review

In 2003, a bottle of 1785 Chateau d’Yquem once belonging to Thomas Jefferson was sold in London for $56,588, making it the most expensive bottle of white wine and earning d’Yquem the title of “Liquid Gold.”

What more fitting wine for a toast to the alluring yellow metal that has fascinated humankind for most of recorded time?

Why is it now an appropriate time to drink to gold? Because gold is possibly near to shaking-off a sustained and coordinated attack on its monetary credibility by some of the world’s most powerful central banks. Investors could win back an asset that offers protection against the financial abuse of governments.

Most wines are priced as commodities on the basis of quality, supply and demand. Others, undrinkable, such as the 200-year-old d’Yquem, are sold as collectors items or investments.

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