There have been previous threads about coins and rounds made from niobium, tantalum, titanium and so on: http://www.cointalk.com/t20534/ http://www.cointalk.com/t25815/ http://www.cointalk.com/t32549/ An interesting firm tries to make rounds, which they call "coins", out of every possible element in the periodic table: http://www.elementsales.com/ecoins.htm But even with those as examples, would you ever have thought of mercury? Scroll to the bottom of http://www.georgesugarman.com/artpages/grantees/2003/tim blum.html, which has dime and quarter replicas cast from frozen mercury. Lends new meaning to the term "Mercury dime". According to resources in Googlespace, frozen mercury is fairly soft, so it should be possible to strike it instead of casting it. Dry ice temperatures are below the freezing point of mercury, so theoretically you wouldn't even need liquid nitrogen to do your mercury minting. Antarctica could stop foreigners from taking their money outside the country, if Antarctica had money. This concludes your frivolity for the day. EDIT: Don't try this at home, mercury is toxic, at room temperature it gives off mercury vapors, it needs to be handled as a hazardous material.
Mercury was the first thing I thought of when I read "out of every possible element in the periodic table" LOL! Very cool link, thanks for sharing.
Haha, awesome. Thinking about Antartic coins made from frozen mercury is cool... couldn't hold 'em for very long or keep them in your pocket, though, I'd bet.
There was a science fiction story about that, a tongue-in-cheek one. The aliens used plutonium coins as money to encourage people to keep money in circulation and not hoard it (talk about money burning a hole in your pocket). The story ends with one alien who hoarded anyway and wound up accumulating a critical mass.
