Free and the Internet seem to go hand in hand. Users expect things to cost nothing. It is not so with print publications, but there are still freebies there, too, and hobbyists should consider taking advantage of them.

Numismatic News offers all of its subscribers a free classified ad each week. Regular users get more value from the classifieds than they pay for the subscription.

Show organizers get a minimum of three free listings for their shows in the weekly Show Directory plus appearances in the twice yearly Show and Auction Guide if they get the notices of shows to us far enough in advance. That makes five free listings. All that is required basically is that the organizers ask.

Numismatic News includes a free show listing form in every issue. If snail mail isn’t the show organizer's cup of tea, he or she has the option of e-mailing the information to Lisa Dombrowski at lisa.dombrowski@fwpubs.com. They can even telephone (800) 573-0333 if they want to add paid listings to the free ones for just $10 a week.

I know that budgets are tight. Take advantage of these two freebies and stretch your hobby dollars.

Does this read like an advertisement? Well, I plead guilty. I am proud of the paper and its free services and I hope readers will take advantage of these free opportunities to enrich their hobby experiences.

CONECA is a hobby organization that should be more often in the public eye and have more members.

I think this every time I publish a story about a newly reported error coin. Inevitably I receive e-mails and letters asking about errors following the stories. I know this topical area is popular and these contacts just prove it.

However, to be able to properly identify errors and to collect them intelligently takes some education. CONECA, which stands for Combined Organizations of Numismatic Error Collectors of America,  is an organization that can help in this process if hobbyists would take a few minutes to join.

Dues are $25 and I am sure that figure will stop most would-be joiners. It is a shame, because the learning process is not free. You either pay upfront with dues, or somewhere down the line a mistake with a purchase might cost you more than the annual dues ever would.

Yeah, I know it sounds like I am getting on my high horse, but editors are allowed that occasionally in the name of furthering the hobby educational process.

Visit www.CONECAonline.org. See what you think. The time to act is now rather than when you find that funny looking coin that might be worth 25 cents or $250. Becoming able to tell the difference is worth the effort. This is a good place to start.

I have received my invitation to speak at the Sarasota Coin Club meeting held in conjunction with the Florida United Numismatists Convention in January. This will be my third year in a row, so what I have to say must be of some interest to the members.

I enjoy attending. It is nice to see a meeting of a successful club that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to visit and to hear what its members have to say.

This past January I gave a talk with 10 forecasts for this year. I have just one more month to go before I have to tote up my successes and failures.

One of the glaring failures so far has been my gold forecast. Back at the opening of 2007, I figured whatever gold did it would close right round $600, not all that far from where it opened the 12-month period. Better not quit my day job, as the saying goes.

I thought I had good reasons, but apparently the market thinks otherwise. I suppose I can console myself for the next 30 days by saying it ain’t over ’til it’s over.

But I am ready to face the music. What better place than the FUN convention to make a clean breast of things and look forward to 2008? What better group than Sarasota club members to share it with?

Then there’s the truly hard part. I have to come up with 10 more forecasts. Perhaps I should leave gold alone.

Back safe and sound from your holiday weekend? Good.

I wasn’t expecting to be in the office, so this was prepared ahead of time. The day before Thanksgiving, I checked www.coinflation.com to see what the current metallic values were for cents and nickels.

Prices have been tumbling with the stock market. Because copper and nickel are industrial metals, demand is primarily from users who grow or contract with the overall economy.

With the stock market going into panic mode reasonably regularly since late July, it probably should be no surprise that metals are making their way lower regardless of what gold is doing.

Copper has fallen below $3 a pound to $2.9386, taking the value of the old 95 percent copper cent to approximately 1.95 cents each.

Nickel has declined to $13.3802 a pound. The five-cent coin is now worth 6.1 cents in copper and nickel metal. We have come a long way down since spring when I was writing that the coin was worth nearly 10 cents.

The real shocker for me and anyone who doesn’t follow the market daily is the price of zinc. It is less than $1 a pound at .9943. The copper-coated zinc cent that has been made since 1982 is now worth .57477 cents each. The Mint might actually be able to make a profit again at that level. Certainly there is no threat of melting for this particular coin.

If metal prices keep declining we will have to ask ourselves: was the Mint lucky or good when it did not rapidly move to change the alloys when the price increases first threatened the viability of the cent and nickel coins. What do you think?

If you are reading this on the day it was written, you haven’t gone over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house yet for a nice juicy turkey dinner.

It is hard sometimes to keep focused on the coin hobby when family obligations beckon, but let’s try.

First up, I need to point out a math error in my Monday blog. I slapped my forehead yesterday when I noticed it. It involved the prices of the Dolley Madison First Spouse gold coins. Everybody now knows they went up in price and many consider the increase a substantial one. I wrote that the increase was 19.14 percent on average. I should have written 23.67 percent. For some reason, I divided the difference between the higher and lower prices by the new higher number rather than the lower figure from which the comparison was being made.

The outcome does not alter any of the points I was trying to make, but it is an indication that I was sloppy Monday morning.

Second up, I see that the “W” uncirculated silver American Eagle coin has gone off sale from the Mint Web site. That is likely due to a depletion in the supply rather than the cost of silver bullion. As of this week’s Mint Statistics, the Mint had sold 558,810 of the coins. That figure is not as high as the 746,421 proofs sold so far, but it is a substantial number and few can complain that they didn’t have adequate chance to buy one.

Other items will be going off sale in the coming weeks as supplies run out. These are primarily bullion-related coins. The Mint’s bullion distributors are usually given the chance to take a last crack at inventory before the year closes. The weekly increase in gold and silver American Eagles and Buffalo gold totals seems to indicate that the pipeline is being filled.

The holidays are a popular time for bullion coins given as gifts. We will see if the higher prices lessen the demand this year or increase it.

I might have messed up the math Monday morning, but there is one figure that I know is correct. I already know how many pieces of pumpkin pie I want to eat tomorrow.

Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving. The next post will be on Monday morning.