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Hello All,
We haven't been active for awhile, but it is nice to reach out to fellow scrappers around the US! We are currently watching the downhill trend of the copper prices and are wondering how your business is affected by it?
When copper prices fall do you still scrap, sell, or bulk up until they rise?
Looking forward to feedback from all the copper scrapers out there!
Hold if you can, sell if you must. Hope for brighter days sometime down the road. Work twice as hard for half as much pay. Be a jack of all trades.
I have said this many times on here...switch your focus when things are very low or too low to make sense to do (ie I won't do steel unless there is no other choice but to take ti to get rid of it). When one thing is down, move to something else, modify your business to include resales etc. If you get it, then great, sell it and then use the money to flip something else. Timing markets generally will get you killed in them...besides, by the time you get 20% increase on copper, I have made well over that increase by selling today and flipping the money multiple times.
Just my 2 cents. When things don't pay, do something else until it does pay.
I don't do much copper anymore but in other things I do deal in the price has also gone down.
A: I pay less but I am able to walk away(I can live without the income). One of the toughest things to do is to explain why I will pay much less than before. I
B: I have branched off into things that make more for less effort. (basically what the others have referred to).
C: Find ways to stream line your operation. Some believe in holding until prices go up is a good Idea. I do it but for other reasons.
If I was a full time guy I would turn and burn. I would only stock pile if it reduced shipping, increased prices, or in some other way helped my business.
73, Mike
I hold too. I'm ok with my income, so I just can't see selling at a low price for all the work I put into getting the material broken down. In my mind there is a cut off on how low it can go before I won't sell scrap for that amount. A line in the sand lol. Besides that bright wire looks so good in the bins that I don't want to let it go.
I sold a lot of Copper US$1800 just as the prices started to drop. 19 months ago, pure chance of timing though.
I have not sold Iron for about 8 years because of a deal where I gave all mine in exchange for 'picking rights to the nonferrous' at a scrapmetal drop off point.
Since then our prices have not dropped as much as in America because of the changing US/NZ dollar (NZ was 90 cents, now 66 cents.)
Now I save up about $60- $90 worth and sell it.
I do the same with Brass and Copper domestic and Ali. Am concentrating on escrap for a good payday at some point.
Escrap gives up plastic coated wire, various Copper in small amounts, and Ali. And light gauge since I can sell it myself now (scrap dropoff yard closed because of non viability)
I plan for this so I don't sit on things long enough to loose money unless its just something I want to save on to that affects no real income unless say gold hits 5000oz lol. but around here prices dropping has just brung in even more goodies because people don't want to do the extra work. steel for example is the biggest, and grills are my newest best friends. people pass up on these all the time now because of the prices being so low but that's just steel, people pass up the cast alu the brass and stainless on some but most profitable are good thick grill plates, these sell fast and for $5ea I sell them for.
I all but quit buying scrap, and buy from a very select few. I put work into a beat up Honda, and won, I car I would've junked not too long ago. My other hobby of demo derby leads me to new buyers of some items and has also given me the chance to buy many "junk" demo cars, i.e. past the point of ever being derbied again. So I'll take it easy until scrap rebounds and then hopefully sell a whole slug of junk cars.