Have any old copper pipes lying around? FYI, the price of scrap is high

[mtnsnake]

Copper is going out of sight.

I just scrapped some old copper pipes that had been lying around and got over a hundred bucks for them. For "clean" copper you can get around $2/lb right now at many scrap metal places, so don't be throwing those old pipes away that are lying in your cellar! Even "dirty brass", such as old faucets, etc, is worth something.

[Democrats_win]

1. People caught stealing Cu pipes from old Gates Rubber plant in Denver.

[susanna]

2. Maybe copper is doing well, but cast iron isn't worth anything... n/t

[mtnsnake]

4. You're right about that. Iron is a bummer. So heavy and not worth much.

There's a lot of copper lying around, though, and it's easy to handle.

[The Jacobin]

3. Penny costs more than a cent to make

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Penny_costs_more_than_cent_to_0421.html


A penny costs more than a cent for the U.S. Mint to make, according to a story set for Saturday's New York Times, RAW STORY has found.

Excerpts from the article written by Floyd Norris:
#

What happens if a penny is worth more than one cent?

That is an issue the U.S. Mint could soon face if the price of metals keeps rising. Already it costs the mint well more than a cent to make a penny.

This week the cost of the metals in a penny rose above 0.8 cents, more than twice the value of last fall. Because the government spends at least another six-tenths of a cent -- above and beyond the cost of the metal -- to make each penny, it will lose nearly half a cent on each new one it mints.

The real problem could come if metals prices rise so high that it would be economical to melt down pennies for the metals they contain.

[Flabbergasted]

5. Gosh I could just about replace my copper in the basment with PVC for

Free

[mtnsnake]

6. Hey, I'm just trying to make you a buck in case any is lying around

that you could recycle and get some cash for it besides.

I wasn't talking about replacing your functioning copper pipes or anything.

[Flabbergasted]

7. I was joking...But I could ya know......

[JunkYardDogg]

8. I'm in the Scrap Biz- Copper is over $3 per pound

Tuesday- Copper went up the limit permitted in one day and they had to close the market- COMEX
Everything is going to China and India and there is a shortage of raw materials, scrap metals included,
Copper hits historic highs every day
In the biz, this is mind boggling
The prices are so high that major thefts and hijackings of 20 ton container loads are becoming common, a 20 ton container
load of scrap #1 copper wire is worth between $100,000 and $120,000 each
The Chinese company who I sell to told me that last Sunday nite, the 3 guard dogs in their yard in China were killed
This past month, they had 3 trucks hauling 3 containers of brass scrap from the Chinese port to their yard, and all 3 trucks were stopped on the hiway and hijacked at one time.
Now they are having a hard in China finding truckers to haul containers of scrap
I heard of one container of scrap copper taken to the trucker's yard in L.A., awaiting delivery to the harbor, which was stolen from the trucker's yard.
And it is not uncommon to ship container loads of scrap to China and not getting paid

[mtnsnake]

9. You must be smiling

if you're in the scrap biz right now, although I'm sure things aren't always as they appear.

Anything else, besides copper, we should be looking for that might be "just lying around"?

[JunkYardDogg]

10. Everything is high

All brass Alloys are based on their copper content and they are high also
Aluminum is good
Scrap Iron is high
Although the market on scrap, junked Rethugs is soft, there are not yet enough discarded junked
Republicans yet, to send to the shredder and remelt

[mtnsnake]

14. Thanks, and LOL!!

the market on scrap, junked Rethugs is soft

:rofl:

[Lisa]

19. I guess I'd better hang onto my copper, brass, and bronze offcuts ...

I make Roman and medieval armor and other military equipment as a hobby (use copper and brass for hinges, scabbard decoration, etc.) -- and I have been saving even the tiny bits and pieces for making washers or inlay. At this rate, maybe it'll be worth keeping even those scraps I can't use, for someone to melt down.

(on the down side, I imagine that the prices will also go up for my raw materials ...)

[DemoTex]

11. I just had to replace a short section of copper gutter.

Six-inch copper gutter is now $42/linear foot!

[BrotherBuzz]

12. Ouch! Does that price include labor or just the gutter?

My dream of copper gutters on my California Craftsman bungalow just evaporated.

[DemoTex]

17. That $42 was an "installed" price.

But they were here anyway, re-roofing. It didn't take them 15 minutes to hang that 5-foot section of gutter ($210+tax). The whole project was an insurance job to fix the downed tree damage from December's ice storm.

[Dr. Death]

13. Theoretically speaking, where might one find copper

"just lying around"?

[BrotherBuzz]

15. Old electric motors

[mtnsnake]

18. Anywhere

It's usually in the form of pipes, big or small, but I also came across this guy who had a bunch of solid copper bars (they looked like 2 x 4's), each weighing over 100 pounds, which he saved from an old foundry when it closed down years ago. He didn't know at the time why he even saved them, just that he did. He just cashed them in last week and made a hefty amount of money on them, in the thousands.

Lots of times people seem to have pipes lying around in their cellar from when old copper pipes were replaced with modern PVC piping.

There are also lots of "junk dealers" who have piles of it laying on the ground behind their houses. Some of these guys have hit the jackpot, depending on how much they've saved.

Some people if they have it are willing to give you a pipe or two, just for the asking, because they don't want to take the time to cut it up with a hacksaw and down to the scrapper.

I had some last year in my garage and gave it to a carpenter who was working on a project for us. He did me a "favor" by getting rid of it for me. LOL. I told him at the time to come and get more old copper pipes that were lying on the floor of my cellar, but thank goodness he forgot!

[formercia]

16. Before the beginning of the War, Copper was around 50 cents/lb.

For Copper and other Base metals:

http://www.kitcometals.com/



for Precious Metals:

http://www.kitco.com/market/

[JunkYardDogg]

20. The Iraqi War has nothing to do with the price of scrap Copper

The price of Oil has everything to do with the situation in the MidEast
Those are good graphs BTW
The Copper market is driven by supply and demand
There is not enough copper now in the world for the demand
China and India have driven the demand up beyond supply
there is a shortage of all forms of scrap metal worldwide and the
foreign buyers have continued to bid the prices up
The Chinese government has come up with a government financed capitalism
They went a number of steps past the Japanese model, in which the Japanese government supported business by providing nearly
interest free loans to the business sector.
The Chinese government realized that communism could not sustain their massive population,
so the government put up money to "create" businesses to jump start a capitalist economy, the money was put up
at the federal, state and local regional levels. One of the easiest ways to provide jobs was the scrap metal business
Especially as the country needed raw materials to grow- the demand became insatiable and the Chinese buyers spread throughout the western industrialized world buying scrap metal and driving up the prices, creating a sellers market, unprecedented and never seen before
In the last 2 days, copper has gone up almost 30 cents per pound
The Iraq war has nothing to do with the copper market
One of the most glaring aspects of the war is that the U.S. is not manufacturing replacement
war materiels -this is different from any other war which the U.S. has fought
In the first place, the equipment which was sent to Iraq was not even new, it was already used, shipped off the bases.
We are not even using massive amounts of munitions.
I am fairly certain that they stopped production of Abrams M1A tanks
which raises an extremely interesting question, if we are not manufacturing replacement war materiel on a substantial
level, ( which consumes a lot of money), and the war is astronomically expensive, than were the hell is this massive amount
of money going?