It was after reading about the humble British 1 Pence piece that led me to think about the metal Bronze.
It's been around since, well, the Bronze age. It's an alloy of Copper and Tin and is tougher than Copper and Tin on their own.
I believe it's still widely used in marine applications like propellers but also sculptures and plaques that get stolen by people devoid of any morality, much like bankers and politicians.
The humble British decimal penny from 1971 to 1992 was made in Bronze before it changed to the cheap copper plated steel. Why? Because Bronze became worth more than the face value of the Penny. Inflation made Bronze too expensive to use. People would simply keep their old pennies and sell them to scrap metal merchants.
I actually know a man who tried buying £1million worth of 2pence pieces. He was going to ship them to a foreign country to be melted down because the old 2pence pieces were made of 97% pure copper and he stood to make a lot of money from the scrap value.
You can't melt the currency down in the country it was issued in. There are laws stopping that but there's no law against melting it in other countries I hear.
So, almost all western governments have slowly issued worthless coinage to replace coinage that had real worth because of their metal content.
At this moment Greece and the Eurozone is teetering on the brink of collapse, where the Greek people are withdrawing 1billion Euros A DAY from Greek banks because they fear a bank run and losing all their savings if they change to Drachma. Not that it'll help if Greeks stash Euro's under their bed because the Euro as a whole is in deep trouble. The Spanish have started withdrawing Euros from Santander and even the British Santander is having withdrawals and they're not connected with the problems in Spain.
Rich Greeks are buying housing in London because they see London real estate as a safe haven. Although the Pound Sterling isn't doing that well either, but you can see the thinking. Buy hard assets. Something that can't be devalued.
I never understood the buying real estate hard asset/investment thing myself. Council tax, water rates, electricity, insurance and maintenance of a house is expensive. With metals, you leave it in a cupboard or your garage. Years later, list it on Ebay, or go to a jeweller or scrap metal merchant and exchange it for cash.
Final note. A colleague of mine said he paid £30 for his gold wedding ring in 1992. It felt like about 8grams to me. A gold sovereign weighs 8grams and costs no less than £270 today. So that ring has had an almost a tenfold increase in value compare to the Pound in 20 years.
Oh yes, the bronze bars. They're selling for £60 at the time of writing this. The metal grade is PB102 from a certified metals dealer (phosphor Bronze 102) which seems to be the most widely used grade. It has a beautiful golden hue to it. They're hand polished in Birmingham UK and pressed in Redditch. British made from start to finish.
You can buy them at the link below.
