Melting For Copper Bullion

It's your money, you can spend it how you wish but I would advise against investing in silver. That stuff is volatile as heck right now.

I buy silver for the enjoyment of owning it, not as an investment.

Let us know when you sell it. From a guy who has owned const. co and has been around this venture for many years, it is a no win venture. The time in gathering and stripping never works out to minimum wage. Unless you buy salvage rights to a whole building and can strip out $2000 worth, it is only a few dollars here and there.
But more importantly, you have to know where to draw the line between "scrapping" and raiding guys onsite storage supplies. Taking a roll of wire or some copper gutters, someone put aside, but you "though" they were throwing out, will cost you your job and maybe more.

But good luck and update this thread when you sell it

When stripping wire, why can't you just burn the insulation off it in one big batch? Does burning it change the value for scrap? And an old friend of mine used to work in the salvage business. He would tear down old buildings for free just for the salvage rights. He sold the old brick (this was in new england where there are buildings with the good OLD double fired bricks) and paid for the workers with the copper....he did quite well. Don't say it can't be done, just a matter of how "enriched" with copper the site is.

A lot of interesting feedback...

After reading all of everyone's posts, which I might say I deeply and graciously thank you all for, I'm going to have to agree with FF on this one.

It's ok to have an opinion that copper is worthless, or just not worth stacking. I was just pointing out that his post is fine here. It's not off topic at all.

Also, bullion is defined by miriam webster as such:

1 a : gold or silver considered as so much metal; specifically : uncoined gold or silver in bars or ingots
b : metal in the mass <lead bullion>
2: lace, braid, or fringe of gold or silver threads

Metal in mass, even lead, is bullion. You definition was probably from investopedia, not a dictionary.

I'm just trying to point out that
1. This post does in fact belong here (regardless of opinion)
2. Hoarded copper IS bullion (regardless of opinion)

That being said, if you feel copper is not worthwhile, that is another thing all together. It doesn't change what the board encompasses or what the word "bullion" means.

Burning insulation from copper wire is illegal (federal clean air act).

If the yard accepts it, they are doing so illegally.

When burning, you lose copper weight also, so you might as will just manually strip the insulation.

Certainly every dictionary is different. There are many definitions out there. I was merely pointing out that yours wasn't the only one. Also, I don't think anyone would argue that




Actually, dictionaries do keep up with society. They are starting to change the definition of the word "literally" because people use it as a hyperbole these days.
As CNN notes: "The definition of literally is no longer the literal definition of literally. ... This is going to give grammarians a headache, literalists a migraine and language nerds a nervous breakdown."




I think we can all agree that copper is not precious by any stretch of the imagination. I merely wanted to point out that any bulk metal can be considered bullion.

I didn't say you should like copper bullion, I just meant that it can be bullion. Plain and simple. I'm not "hiding behind a dictionary" I'm saying "look, enough people agree with this definition to put it in dictionary." And dictionaries change by usage of words, not just etymologies.

My uncle saves up scrap until prices are up and then cashes in. That can be considered bullion, just like what the OP is doing.

I never meant to get into a semantics debate, but when people try to say that someone is incorrectly using a word when that person is in fact using the word correctly, I tend to jump in. Sorry if it went to far.