Quotes for commodity futures are reported daily in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. The CME Group and the Financial Times post prices for commodities futures and options.
Historical quotes for the CME, CBOT, NYMEX and COMEX exchanges are available through Datamine, Tick Data, Factiva and Lexis.
Quotes for several commodity indexes are reported in the Wall Street Journal. For more, try Factiva and/or Lexis.
Following is information for specific commodities.
Coal: The U.S. Energy Information Administration posts current average sale and delivered prices, as well as historical coal prices back to 1949.
Coffee: See the separate entry for "Coffee."
Diamonds: Recent editions of the USGS Minerals Yearbook provide prices per carat. Rapaport Diamond Prices are available by subscription on Diamonds.net.
Gas: See "Petroleum Products" and or "Natural Gas," both below.
Metals: Prices paid for steel, iron, brass, nickel and many other ferrous and nonferrous metals and alloys are published in a daily trade paper called AMM: American Metals Market. AMM is available on Westlaw (AMMTLMKT). Subscribers can get current and historical prices from the AMM Web site, MetalPrices.com and Metal Bulletin Connect.
New Steel, formerly Iron Age, reports steel and iron prices for 17 U.S. cities. New Steel is also searchable on Westlaw (NEWSTEEL).
Other sources for metal prices include CRUonline, Platts' Steel Markets Daily, Metal Bulletin, Steel Business Briefing, Haver Analytics and Kitco Base Metals.
Prices for gold and silver are posted on GoldPrice and Kitco.com. Kitco.com also has prices for platinum and palladium. Historical gold prices are available from the World Gold Council. Free registration is required. Click on the "Investment" tab, then choose Statistics / Prices. Prices are available daily (from 1998), monthly (from 1971) or annually (from 1900) in chart or spreadsheet format. Prices for ETFs that track gold prices (e.g. SPDR Gold Shares/GLD) are available through services that provide stock prices (see "Stock Prices").
Natural Gas: The U.S. Energy Information Administration posts current and historical natural gas prices. You can get the last Henry Hub Natural Gas Front Month Futures from FT.com.
Oil: See "Petroleum Products," below.
Petroleum Products: The U.S. Energy Information Administration posts weekly, monthly and annual prices for gasoline, diesel and other petroleum prices, including historical data. One EIA spreadsheet, Table 5.24 provides Retail Motor Gasoline and On-Highway Diesel Fuel Prices back to 1949. The EIA also posts current and historical International Petroleum (Oil) Prices and Crude Oil Import Costs. The Oil & Gas Journal publishes statistics including prices for gasoline, refined products and crude oil (published in the back of each issue and available to subscribers online).
Timber: A newsletter called Timber Mart-South reports on timber prices in 11 states of the Southeast U.S. Back issues are posted on the Timber Mart-South web site.