[ExI] Sources of info on historical commodity prices

[Kelly Anderson]

2012/4/6 Max More <max at maxmore.com>:
> I'm finding it surprisingly difficult to find a good source of historical
> prices for a few commodities. I'm particularly interested in figuring out
> the real price changes in the five metals involved in the Julian Simon-Paul
> Ehlich bet since 1980. Those are copper, tin, nickel, tungsten, and
> chromium.
>
> General price inflation since 1980 has been 176.3%. So it's important that
> historical price sources state whether the prices are nominal or
> inflation-adjusted.

Why does inflation of the US dollar relate to the bet? Was the bet
about how these metals would perform in dollars?

> None of the sources I've come across are adequate for this task. Among those
> I've tried:
> http://www.basemetals.com/
>
> http://metals.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/metal_prices/
>
> http://www.itri.co.uk/index.php?option=com_mtree&task=att_download&link_id=49605&cf_id=24
>
> http://www.aisgroup.com/Reports/CalyonSpeechSlides041207.pdf  (page 7)
>
>
> I'm also interested in price changes over longer periods and for other
> commodities.
>
> Any suggestions?

Good data is hard to come by. However, I think you might be able to
normalize it all to gold. Get the spot price for gold and copper on a
given day, and you should have a "value" that is real in some sense.

The problem is what is the best measure of value, the US dollar? Gold?
The Euro? What question is it that you're actually trying to answer?

I'm sure you have looked at the chart here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager

-Kelly