The Mythical American Buffalo and a Pocketful of Misnomers

The Bison
Look at the face on that thing! man!
The bison is one strange looking critter.
www.livingwilderness.com/wildlife/bison-standing.html

"The Mythical American Buffalo a Pocketful of Misnomers" Now that is tough, try to say that ten times really quick!

Mythical creatures such as the Unicorn, the Dragon and the American Buffalo appear in books, art, songs and even in our religions but have any of them ever really existed?

It may be possible that the unicorn and the dragon once roamed the realm of reality. Perhaps they were all killed out to extinction by mankind long ago. Perhaps they were around so many centuries ago that only distorted memories remain of what they were.

The American Buffalo is a much newer creature. It is also one of the strangest mythical creature cases I know of. Although it does not exist it's existence is common knowledge, at least in the U.S. Sound crazy? Show a photo of a bison to someone, ask them, "What is this here critter?" few will say bison but many will say buffalo.

I was talking to a guy about coins and collecting and he mentioned that he had a bunch of Buffalo Nickels. He got them out and was showing them to me. I mentioned that it was funny how that even though it was common knowledge that the animal was not a buffalo we still called it a Buffalo Nickel. Long story short he disagreed and held that it was in fact a buffalo and I didn't know what I was talking about. OK. I just dropped it. No point in arguing about it. I know what I know but I don't need to preach it. Call it a koala bear nickel if you like.

Keep Your Copper Pennies!

This 1973 cent, still found in pocket
change, holds almost 3 cents worth
 of copper at current spot value!

Not too long ago, when I was much younger, copper was going for about 35 or 45 cents per pound at the scrap yard. I gathered up quite a bit of scrap copper over the years for the scrap yards. But now copper is about ten times higher. In fact, as of the day of this post, copper is at US$4.2345. That means one copper penny holds nearly 3 cents worth of copper! Imagine a coin still available in circulation that is actually valued at nearly 3 times face value. Will copper continue to rise? Ten years from now will that copper cent be worth 10 times face value? Or even more?

How much does it cost you to get a 95% pure copper penny? Well, right now if you take the time to look at your pocket change you can find some of them for free, or rather for 1 cent. And if the bad times come and you have to break into the bank you can always spend them right? But I don't think you will want to spend them once you realize their value.

In 1982 the US Mint finally decided to change the composition of the penny because copper was getting too costly. It had reached the point to where the cost of minting a one cent coin was higher than a penny. The intrinsic metal value of the US penny had exceeded the face value. It reminds us of the situation with silver coins in 1964. In fact copper is right now at the same levels as silver was not too long ago.