Base Metal Bullion Lot - Bronze, Aluminum, Tin, Copper, Titanium

Base Metal Bullion Lot - Bronze, Aluminum, Tin,  Copper, Titanium

Base Metals Bullion: Base Metal Bullion Lot - Bronze, Aluminum, Tin, Copper, Titanium

Base Metal Bullion Lot - Bronze, Aluminum, Tin, Copper, Titanium

Base Metal Bullion Lot - Bronze, Aluminum, Tin,  Copper, Titanium

2012 Australian Olympic Team $1 Five-Coin Set Aluminium Bronze

Buy the official 2012 Australian Olympic Team $1 Five-Coin Set at The Perth Mint, featuring:

• Australian Legal Tender 
• $1 Aluminium Bronze
• Illustrated Cards in a Souvenir Album
• Authorised by the Australian Olympic Committee

From the awe inspiring opening ceremony to the sheer excitement of the competition, the London 2012 Olympic Games will feature thousands of athletes, 26 sports and 205 participating countries.
Australia has been represented at every Olympic Games and all but four Olympic Winter Games in the modern era since 1896.  Australia hosted the Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956 and the incredibly successful Games of Sydney 2000.
Originally, the ancient Olympic Games were held in Olympia, Greece, from the 8th century BC to the 5th century AD.  The modern Games held under the auspices of the International Olympic Committee were first hosted in Athens in 1896.  These Games brought together 14 nations and 241 athletes who competed in 43 events.
As the Olympic torch is lit, so will it ignite the hopes of all Australians, to hear again, the famous words uttered by Norman May, “Gold! Gold to Australia! Gold!”

Olympic Reverse Designs

This stunning five-coin set is struck from aluminium bronze, and designed to inspire. The reverse designs comprise:

• An Olympic runner with the inscription FASTER.
• An Olympic pole-vaulter with the inscription HIGHER.
• An Olympic weight-lifter with the inscription STRONGER.
• An Olympian in a triumphant pose with arms raised and the inscription VICTORY.
• The Australian Olympic Team’s mascot, the boxing kangaroo.

All the coins carry the Australian Olympic Team official logo and the inscription 2012 AUSTRALIAN OLYMPIC TEAM.

Australian Legal Tender

Issued as Australian legal tender, each aluminium bronze coin’s obverse depicts the Ian Rank-Broadley effigy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the monetary denomination

Illustrated Cards in a Souvenir Album

Each coin is housed in an illustrated presentation card and is displayed in a $1 coin album with a specially designed souvenir cover.

What the 2.4-Cent Penny Says About America's Budget Problem

It turns out that the humble penny is a pricey coin. Specifically, each new penny coined by the government costs 2.4 cents.

My point here is not to remind you that pennies are anachronisms that ought to be dispensed with entirely—though that is true. This is actually a story about the federal budget, and why it’s so tough to manage.

Yesterday, President Obama unveiled his budget for 2013—a plan for everything that the government will spend money on and where it intends to get that money. I won’t bore you with the details, since this document won’t survive first contact with Congress and doesn’t offer a final picture of what government activity will look like next year, although it does reveal a lot about what the president thinks is important.

One good idea in the budget is to change the way we make those expensive pennies and nickels (which cost 11.2 cents each), using cheaper metals to do the job. Pennies are now made mostly of zinc, and nickels have more copper than nickel. If we switch up the raw materials—perhaps to an aluminum alloy, like other advanced economies, or else industrial porcelain—the Treasury Department estimates we could save about $100 million a year.

Of course, $100 million a year sounds awesome, but in budget terms it’s a tiny amount of money—less than one-100th of 1 percent of the entire $3.7 trillion the president proposes spending next year.  But like everything that matters, budgeting is a game of inches, so lopping off small stuff—especially no-brainer waste like this—is a good way to find breathing room as you work your way up to the big stuff

Did I say no-brainer waste? This is where it gets interesting. Even though this idea seems like pragmatic good government, there are plenty of people who think it’s a bad idea. The Wall Street Journal wrote about many of these naysayers in 2010, the first time the president proposed the idea. Here are some of the usual suspects:

Zinc miners. Believe it or not, the people who sell zinc the government uses to make pennies aren’t eager for them to change their ways. Big Zinc spends a lot of time lobbying to keep pennies the way they are—even funding an organization called Americans for Common Cents to lobby Congress to keep the penny around.
People who conflate coins' value with the metal in them. Plenty of people think that coins are valuable because they have valuable metal in them, but that’s not how it works: Our money is valuable because we agree to use it as a medium of exchange. Supply and demand determines the rest; U.S. money hasn’t depended on the price of any metal since 1971. People who believe that there’s a scenario that involves selling their pennies to the local zinc smelter would probably be better off hoarding bullets instead. There are also a lot of people who just plain like pennies and think new ones won't be as nice.
Businesses that rely on coin-operated vending machines. Folks worry that vending machines, laundromats, coin-counting machines, and parking meters will need to be adjusted en masse if coins' weight or conductivity (two common ways machines identify change) shifts. This is a pretty reasonable concern, but when was the last time you used a penny or a nickel at a vending machine?

When all is said and done, these reasons probably aren’t worth the extra $100 million it costs us not to change the composition of the coins. But these people think about pennies a lot, and they spend money to let the government know what they think. When was the last time you thought about the penny, much less mentioned it to an elected representative?

Now imagine how this dynamic plays out when it comes time to cut outlays on more complex, more expensive issues like health care and national security, which affect nearly everyone and touch businesses across many sectors. The same thing happens with other deficit-drivers, like the Bush administration’s tax cuts or the raft of tax breaks we give out to individuals and corporations.

The penny paradox is a dilemma at the heart of democratic government—a engaged, concentrated group of people who benefit from spending can keep it going, even if it’s not in the broad public interest. Conservatives and other folks with an anti-government bias see this dynamic as one more reason to keep the government out of the spending business. Meanwhile, those of us who think the government can do more harm than good see this as a problem to be solved through better institutional design, a more engaged citizenry, and better politicians—if we can find them.

So if you’re ever wondering why Washington’s fights over the budget seem wildly out of proportion or overly gridlocked, remember that cutting waste and focusing on top priorities is harder than it looks. And the next time you hear someone complaining about our sky-high deficits, ask them how much it costs to make a penny.

Alternate Inflation Hedges : COPPER and NICKEL Base Metal News

Copper and Nickel as alternative investments to physical silver bullion.

Check out kitco base metals to track there prices, still very affordable.

Bullion is hard to find and usually way over spot so i reccomend same as video author.

Silver sprint may slow down; copper, aluminium to shine

A rally in non-food commodities has taken bullion and a few base metals to new highs in 2010. The high prices in these commodities were the result of huge fund flows and hopes of improved economic prospects. From the investment perspective, silver has been the outperfomer followed by nickel, copper and gold while crude oil has lagged. Interestingly, brokers are divided on the prospects of the precious metals while forecasting, albeit with riders, a bullish outlook for base metals and crude oil. The caution stems from the strength of global economic recovery.



PRECIOUS METALS

Silver has yielded a return of over 70% over the past year while gold has trailed returning 26.8%. The high price of gold led investors to look at silver as an alternative, which benefitted from an increased industrial demand. Unlike gold, silver takes cues from base metals since it doubles up as an industrial metal used in photography, jewellery and electronics.

Gold is up over 20% in the year-to-date, flirting with the $1400 an ounce (31.10gm) chiefly due to a falling dollar and safe-haven buying. Interestingly, buyers, especially in emerging markets such as India, are looking at jewellery as an investment. Citing World Gold Council data, Angel Broking says global demand for gold in the third quarter stood at 922 tonnes, an increase of 12% from year-ago levels. Global jewellery demand has been increasing — 8% from Q3 2009, led by rising demand from India (the largest consumer), China (the second largest), Russia and Turkey.

In the first half of 2010, India’s jewellery demand increased by 67% to 272 tonnes. “The major beneficiary of the economic worries in the Euro zone was the bullion pack,” says Naveen Mathur, associate director (commodities & currencies), Angel Broking. “The price rise is expected to continue as slow recovery in the US and the Euro Zone will act as supportive factor for gold prices.”

OUTLOOK

While Angel Commodities is bullish on the prospects of gold and silver, another commodity broker, Geojit Comtrade, forecasts a sideways to bullish outlook for gold in the range of $1200-1500 an ounce, and a weak outlook for silver in 2011 with the possibility of a 10-15% correction in prices.

How much does bronze cost per ounce?

How much does bronze cost per ounce?

Vincent Metals has a great price chart for base metals... you can find it HERE http://www.vincentmetals.com/1Pricing/Price_Data/