Struck Coin Blanks ???

Every since watching a woman dressed in pirate garb at a renaissance fair (or faire if you prefer) place a blank in a set of dies and drop a heavy weight on it to strike a souvenir coin I have had in the back of my mind the idea to strike my own coins.  I can certainly make the dies.   4140 is relatively easy to machine if you know how, and it will harden "hard enough" for a low production number of from a few hundred to a couple thousand coins.  I also keep a bit of O1 and W1 on hand for those cutting tools I can't hand grind from HSS or carbide.  I even have a propane forge in the back along with a toaster oven for tempering (although it gets used more for powder coating).
I started writing with two questions in mind.
Where to buy/make coin blanks at the best price?  Not the 10-20 on Ebay or Amazon, but a couple hundred to a couple thousand at a more reasonable bulk price.
I forgot the other question, so my second question is what question (or questions) did I forget to ask?  Maybe what alloy would best?  I suspect an annealed copper alloy of some kind.  Many an amusement facility used to have a machine that would take your penny (and a dollar) and roll your penny into a souvenir key tag back in the days when pennies were still copper.
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Bob La Londe
CNC Molds N Stuff
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