WASHINGTON - “She walks in beauty, like the night/Of cloudless climes and starry skies.” Although Lord Byron wrote those words almost two centuries ago, they can serve to describe the classic beauty of Adolph Weinman’s image of Liberty. That image-featured on United States Mint American Eagle bullion and proof coins since 1986-graces the 2008 American Eagle Silver Uncirculated Coin, scheduled for release on March 17 at noon (ET).

The 2008 American Eagle Silver Uncirculated Coin, offered at $25.95, contains one troy ounce of .999 silver. The obverse features Liberty in full stride enveloped in the folds of the American flag, with her right hand extended and branches of laurel and oak in her left. Featured on the coin’s reverse is the image of a Heraldic eagle with shield, an olive branch in the right talon and arrows in the left.

Struck on specially burnished blanks, the American Eagle Uncirculated Coins feature a finish similar to their bullion counterparts, but carry the “W” mint mark, indicating their production at the United States Mint at West Point. Each coin is encapsulated in protective plastic and placed in a blue presentation case accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity signed by the Director of the United States Mint, Edmund C. Moy. (more…)

Gold is in a foot race sprint towards $1,000 a troy ounce and beyond. Platinum is already at $2,174 an ounce. Silver exceeds $20 an ounce. The price of oil has gone over $100 a barrel. Copper is now at a record $3.91 a pound; nickel is a $14.82 a pound and even lowly zinc is at $1.27 a pound.

The age of commodities is upon us.

Here’s the scary thing. A couple hundred dollars ago, gold reached its high of the 1980s, then the height of inflation and a series of economic pressures that were very apparent to the nation as a whole and to coin collectors in particular.

Just as a refresher, the consumer price index in 1980 was going at a clip of more than 10 percent, while the previous year, 1979, saw a 13.5 percent average.

The Hunt brothers had cornered the silver market, or tried to, before it topped out at $50 an ounce. Gold followed, largely on Soviet pressure, and withholding of sales, before it reached its zenith in the $850 range. The economic prospects looked dismal. Read Full Story By David L. Ganz

All that glisters may not be gold but the stuff that has obsessed everyone from King Midas to the rapper 50 Cent is looking pretty shiny at the moment.

Not so long ago it was written off as an obsolete asset with no place in modern finance. But its value has soared by 250 per cent in the past decade and it’s now about to burst through the historic $1,000-an-ounce barrier.

Which makes it rather a shame that Gordon Brown sold off more than half of Britain’s gold reserves at the bottom of the market.

The search for gold is as old as civilisation. One of its special properties – aside from the fact that it is incredibly scarce and virtually indestructible – is that it can turn up in pure nuggets without being mined. That tends not to happen nowadays – I wouldn’t get your hopes up – but at the dawn of history the stuff was first discovered in shining yellow lumps in streams all over the world and was one of the first metals known to mankind.

Easy to work and dispersed widely through the world, it was discovered by many different groups and nearly all who found it were impressed. In 4000BC it was being mined from the slopes of Mount Pangaion in northern Greece to make decorative objects.
Read the full Daily Express Article

NEW YORK — Gold fell sharply Tuesday after crude oil retreated and traders cashed in profits following the metal’s flirtation with the historic $1,000 mark. Silver and copper also declined. Other commodities fell across the board, with corn, wheat, soybean and energy futures all trading lower in a broad futures sell-off.

Gold has gained more than 15 percent this year, driven up by record high oil prices, steep declines in the dollar and worries about a U.S. recession. The most-actively traded April contract hit an intraday high of $992 an ounce on Monday _ a record high and just shy of the psychologically important $1,000 barrier.

Gold’s failure to breach the $1,000 mark triggered a sell-off, sending the metal $17.90 lower to settle at $966.30 an ounce Tuesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gold fluctuated widely, trading as high as $990.30 and as low as $958.30.

“Inability to keep the $1,000 level worried latecomers to the party,” George Gero, vice president with RBC Capital Markets Global Futures, said in a note. “However, past sell-offs turned out to be a buying opportunity.” Read full story from the Washington Post