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