Stacking #1 Copper as a Precious Metal Investment

Hi, with copper scrap prices quite low considering it probably costs as much to mine it,
do scrappers stack their best copper as investment?

it appears that when scrapping there are many ways to turn over bits for cash,
the steel, #2 copper, copper bearing, alloy's, brass, stainless, high & low grade circuit boards and so on.

copper, just like silver, gold, platinum is used for investment purposes, so wouldn't it make sense to stack
your premium copper as if it was bullion?
there's no doubt to me that scrapping for metals is hard work, so in order to make it pay in the long run,
more then just pocket money, or money in the bank, investing in fine copper is a good investment.

Copper is not an endless resource, it will run out one day, just like all precious metals will.

my format is sorta like this, keep the nice clean, heavy #1 copper as bullion, sell everything else
and use 40% of that money to put into other bullion, mostly silver.
I believe silver is very under valued compared to gold, at the moment 1 ounce of gold buys 58 ounces of silver,
now traditionally, like the last 2000 years, 1oz gold bought 16oz silver, this has to balance back one day, silver is used a lot more then gold and will probably run out first.

copper being very cheap could easily double in value overnight, it would be an awful shame to learn everything you did with #1 copper could of been twice as much today wouldn't it?
I feel that the scrap yards would love #1 copper, so little work in melting it into a pure ingot to resell.
in comparison, mining copper to make a pure ingot takes so much resources.

If your scrapping big volumes then you could probably bypass the metal recycler all together for the copper.
i'd be melting and pouring my own ingots and selling to the market that uses them for manufacturing.

anyways, so yeah, bullion.
money can vanish overnight, whether in your bank or under your bed, lots of history to show how people
had to burn paper money for fuel it was worthless, physical precious metal, in your hand is always valuable.
converting some of your cash into bullion is where one day you get paid big time for your hard work.

I see many youtube vids of scrappers busting their back for the day, cashing in on the metal and buying a case of beer, this is crap, it's ok for a treat, but will keep you in the exact same position for ever.
at least take 10% of every cent you make from scrapping and invest it in precious metal for a bit of wealth protection
and something awesome to show for all you hard work over the years to come.

How about bat poop? I remember a place in Tn who thought it was pretty valuable too

That is actually kinda like my plan. I am saving all the good quality copper I get. However, right now, because there are so many scrappers in nc, and im not getting tonnage of scrap at the moment, I am using all the money I get from steel to buy supplies and gas, and alum and stainless to buy silver. I do think that investing in copper is a good idea though. Think about all the copper you can find in almost anything involving electronics. Copper is obviously, like anything we deal with, a finite resource. Short term, is it a good investment? Maybe, maybe not. I think long term, however, its very likely you will get more for your copper than you will now. Even if this isn't true, and copper prices stay pretty much the same, then you have an ace in the hole if you have a couple of bad months. In my opinion, a truck load of copper is a nice safety blanket.

If you really want to invest in copper - there's a far easier way. Buy a Ryedale sorter and get boxes of pennies from the bank. Run them through the sorter. Take the zinc pennies back to the bank, get more boxes. Rinse and repeat over and over.

In 1982 the composition of pennies changed from 95% copper/5% zinc to 97.5% zinc/2.5% copper. Stack up the 95% copper pennies until you run out of room. Looked at from a bullion perspective, $100 of copper pennies is worth $223.52 at the current spot price of copper 1909-1982 Lincoln Copper Penny Melt Value - Coinflation As a bonus, if the price of copper craters - you still have $100. The only way to lose is through inflation (and then, the bullion price would be higher than the face value anyway).

And if you don't want to stockpile it for yourself, sell it on eBay. There's plenty of people buying copper pennies for around twice face value right now.

Just don't try to melt it, or ship it out of the country for melting. That's highly illegal.

An even easier way is to just buy boxes of nickels from the bank. No sorting necessary. They're 75% copper and 25% nickel. Each one is currently worth slightly less than a nickel, but when (if) copper prices go back up, they'll be worth more as bullion than face value - just like the pennies. Of course, they're illegal to melt or export as well.

I looked up a Ryedale sorter. Starts at $500. Was expecting at least $1,000 minimum. I may have to look into this further.

I bought a coin counter for around $450 a few years ago. It retailed for $3,000.

yeah I do know about the copper pennies and that, obviously being in australia I can't get them,
otherwise I probably would.
we have no copper coins currently in circulation, so that's outta the question unfortunately.
yeah I know of people in the states with many tonnes of copper pennies.

the last good thing we had in circulation was a 50c piece in 1966, 80% silver, or about 1/3 of an oz, so it's melt value
is about $9 and sometimes people get them in change still.

yeah mech' I understand that could happen, after all, all the gold in fort knox has the very same problem

Ben,

I do the exact same thing as a currency hedge. I keep all of nice clean chunks I run into and sell the rest and purchase more ore. I was going to re-invest in AG as well, but after reading quite a bit, it seemed Brass and Lead was a better hedge in more and varied scenarios.

Originally Posted by scrapperben

Hi, with copper scrap prices quite low considering it probably costs as much to mine it,
do scrappers stack their best copper as investment?

it appears that when scrapping there are many ways to turn over bits for cash,
the steel, #2 copper, copper bearing, alloy's, brass, stainless, high & low grade circuit boards and so on.

copper, just like silver, gold, platinum is used for investment purposes, so wouldn't it make sense to stack
your premium copper as if it was bullion?
there's no doubt to me that scrapping for metals is hard work, so in order to make it pay in the long run,
more then just pocket money, or money in the bank, investing in fine copper is a good investment.

Copper is not an endless resource, it will run out one day, just like all precious metals will.

my format is sorta like this, keep the nice clean, heavy #1 copper as bullion, sell everything else
and use 40% of that money to put into other bullion, mostly silver.
I believe silver is very under valued compared to gold, at the moment 1 ounce of gold buys 58 ounces of silver,
now traditionally, like the last 2000 years, 1oz gold bought 16oz silver, this has to balance back one day, silver is used a lot more then gold and will probably run out first.

copper being very cheap could easily double in value overnight, it would be an awful shame to learn everything you did with #1 copper could of been twice as much today wouldn't it?
I feel that the scrap yards would love #1 copper, so little work in melting it into a pure ingot to resell.
in comparison, mining copper to make a pure ingot takes so much resources.

If your scrapping big volumes then you could probably bypass the metal recycler all together for the copper.
i'd be melting and pouring my own ingots and selling to the market that uses them for manufacturing.

anyways, so yeah, bullion.
money can vanish overnight, whether in your bank or under your bed, lots of history to show how people
had to burn paper money for fuel it was worthless, physical precious metal, in your hand is always valuable.
converting some of your cash into bullion is where one day you get paid big time for your hard work.

I see many youtube vids of scrappers busting their back for the day, cashing in on the metal and buying a case of beer, this is crap, it's ok for a treat, but will keep you in the exact same position for ever.
at least take 10% of every cent you make from scrapping and invest it in precious metal for a bit of wealth protection
and something awesome to show for all you hard work over the years to come.

I don't think i've ever read anything about brass, but in my short time scrapping, i'm growing very fond of my brass bits.
think i'll have to read up about it, what's with lead? only thing I can think to use lead for are fishing sinkers.
although I did think of building an underground bunker out of lead panels so I couldn't be spotted by alien satelight ships once.

Sorry, I didn't catch it that you are down under.

Brass and lead = ammunition

Originally Posted by scrapperben

I don't think i've ever read anything about brass, but in my short time scrapping, i'm growing very fond of my brass bits.
think i'll have to read up about it, what's with lead? only thing I can think to use lead for are fishing sinkers.
although I did think of building an underground bunker out of lead panels so I couldn't be spotted by alien satelight ships once.

oh yeah, bullets, well I guess if shtf and everyone has a gun then bullets would be worth a bit.
thankfully we have gun laws so every man and his dog doesn't own a gun, infact most australians
live life without ever seeing a gun.

for survival purposes we stack willow, for cricket bats, awesome weapon once you develop the skill.
but had to laugh as yesterday I heard on the news of a police bust here in melb'
they raided the hell's angels club house, now the're pretty big, you know what the cops retrieved in that huge bust?
1 stun gun and a small bag of weed, now that's a laugh, I mean these big bad bikies, cops probably thought they'd hit the jackpot,
and they come out with a stupid stun gun? just waiting for the planes to come over one day, land and they
say, hmmm, nice place, we'll take it.

You know who loves gun laws?...politicians and criminals...Everyone should own one...and a foil hat...

I worked in AU for a few months in 2006. I talked with my co-workers extensively about Citizens owning guns etc. It was very interesting how profoundly different the Aussie culture and attitudes were on this one issue. I was in Sydney though, I don't know if rural areas would be different.

Nicest and most hospitable people in the world though, there wasn't a single night or weekend that I wasn't invited to the pub or someone's home....even after they found out I was a crazy gun toting ....fill in the blank....

Originally Posted by scrapperben

oh yeah, bullets, well I guess if shtf and everyone has a gun then bullets would be worth a bit.
thankfully we have gun laws so every man and his dog doesn't own a gun, infact most australians
live life without ever seeing a gun.

for survival purposes we stack willow, for cricket bats, awesome weapon once you develop the skill.
but had to laugh as yesterday I heard on the news of a police bust here in melb'
they raided the hell's angels club house, now the're pretty big, you know what the cops retrieved in that huge bust?
1 stun gun and a small bag of weed, now that's a laugh, I mean these big bad bikies, cops probably thought they'd hit the jackpot,
and they come out with a stupid stun gun? just waiting for the planes to come over one day, land and they
say, hmmm, nice place, we'll take it.

I wish 50% of the pennies you get from a bank were pre-1982 95% copper. It's more like 15%.

i get about 25% copper pennys in customer wraped rolls
in northeast georgia