(Just The News)—New coins and “Redbacks” have been released through the Texas Bullion Depository (TxBD), the only state-run bullion depository in the country.
Texas Lone Star coins and Modern Texas Redback Gold notes have been released through a new TxBD program offering authorized commemorative precious metal products to investors and collectors.
“The Texas Lone Star Coins and Modern Redbacks offer Texans and others a unique opportunity to own precious metal products that honor the state’s rich heritage. They are meticulously crafted under the direction of the Texas Bullion Depository and the state of Texas,” Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock said in a statement. They also “reflect that spirit, combining enduring Texas symbolism with precious metals of the highest purity,” he added.
The 2025 State of Texas Proof 70 commemorative coins are being released in 1 oz. gold bullion, gold proof and silver bullion.
“Struck in .9999 fine gold or .9999 silver and produced to the highest minting standards,” they are designed “to be timeless, official in appearance and instantly recognizable. While not legal tender, the coins are made from pure precious metals that serve as a store of value,” the comptroller’s office states.
The gold coin is available to purchase through the United States Gold Bureau, according to the TxBD. It is selling for $6,842 as of Dec. 29, according to the bureau. The silver coin is selling for $82.92, as of Dec. 29, according to the bureau.
A map of the state of Texas and the Gonzales Cannon are on one side of the coin.
The map highlights Texas’ diverse geography, from the Davis Mountains in the west, to the prairies, canyons, coastal plains and Gulf Coast shoreline. Future releases may introduce new obverse designs, metals and fractional weights next year, the comptroller’s office said.
On the reverse side of the coin is Texas’ Official Coat of Arms, an emblem first adopted by the Republic of Texas in 1839. It includes a lone star, oak and olive branches. (Whether the oak leaves are Spanish oak or post oak has been a subject of debate since 1839.)
Encircling the design is inscribed “THE STATE OF TEXAS,” the year of issue and “FRIENDSHIP,” the state motto.
“Texas” comes from a word used by Native Americans living in what is now deep east Texas who were encountered by Spanish missionaries arrived in New Spain in the late 1600s. The region was part of Spain at the time. The Spanish translated the word, “tejas,” understanding it to mean friend or ally. Tejas would later become Texas; its motto of friendship was adopted by the state legislature in 1930.
The Redback Gold Notes are inspired by promissory notes issued by the Republic of Texas in the late 1830s. They are issued in three weights: 5 centigram (cg), featuring the Texas longhorn; 20 cg, featuring the Texas State Capitol dome, and 100 cg, featuring the Alamo.
Each Redback is individually numbered, has the seal of the state of Texas and the signatures of the governor and acting comptroller. They are considered collectible precious metal products and are not legal tender.
The 2025 100 Modern Redback 24K Gold Foil Note is available to purchase for $278.58; the 20 Modern Redback is available to purchase for $55.68, as of Dec. 29, according to the bureau.
“Unlike their historical predecessors, the modern Redbacks are crafted with intrinsic value. Each note contains a precise, verifiable layer of 24-karat gold deposited onto a durable polymer substrate,” the comptroller’s office explains.
The TxBD says the coins “are not legal tender in the United States or any foreign country.” They are “issued solely for their commemorative, numismatic, and collectible value, not as an investment vehicle.” Purchasing the coins “carries inherent risk. There is no guarantee that a resale market currently exists or will exist in the future,” it states.
The value of redbacks “is based on its precious metal content and collectability, not a government issued face value.” They are ineligible to be stored by the TxBD and don’t qualify as an eligible collectible for the purposes of an IRA, the TxBD explains.
The state legislature created the TxBD 10 years ago when it passed HB 483, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law. In doing so, Abbott was the first governor, and Texas was the first state to create a state-administered precious metals depository in the country.
Under Hancock, the TxBD expanded this year. This fall, Hancock announced the TxBD began accepting precious metal IRA assets, The Center Square reported.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
