First they have to set up the mines, then build roads (canals!
) to ports, and possibly the ports themselves.
Also - build smelters in 'Bama, or powerplants (hydro?) AND smelters elsewhere.
Need I mention machines to make machines to make smelting equipment? Machines to make machines to make mining equipment - or mine it with pickaxe and shovel? Or does Alabama possess such capacity already?
Several years will pass before DT made aluminium comes on the market. But there are heaps of the stuff - by DT standards - of the stuff in Alabama ...
Yeah, from your comment I assumed they might have aluminum smelters up and running
already.
As to coinage, well, I believe that some of your coins were in part sliver up to a few decades ago, that can probably be used for international trade, too.
What about the old cash crops of the area, sugar and tobacco?
Those were always very highly prized, and if there is inventory or a crop ready to harvest then that might help a lot, and potentially force the prices of those commodities lower.
Also, silver is IMO a better trade metal than gold, it has a much wider industrial use than gold, it is utilized in solar panels, some types of battery, as a bactericide, in electronics and in chemistry as a catalyst, something like 80% of mined silver IIRC had an actual non-decorative, industrial use.A landfill/junkyard full of microwaves can be a figurative goldmine, IMHO.
Gold is at about 10%, one of the big problems the British had with the Chinese is that China actually preferred silver to gold.