Copper Hoarding - What's The Realistic Run Up?

Good point Rdwarrior...would aluminum then become the new copper as far as PM's then? I know it is highly sought after by the scrap metal guys already.

As I pointed out in another thread, making 10% profit a week on $200 gives you $1240 in one year. It took 15 years for silver and 40 years for gold coins to be worth 6.2 times face. Clearly, turning, not hoarding, is where the profit is.

It costs as much to ship $100 face in cents as $1000 face in silver. So when you're looking at % over face, factor in that 10x shipping cost.

Likewise storage costs. An article mentioned a man who was robbed of $750,000 worth of silver that he kept at home because the bank didn't have enough space. Figure a $10 roll of silver is worth roughly as much as $80 in copper cents. Hope your floor's sturdy!

Finally, when the gubmint allows cents and nickels to be melted (there are more than enough Zincolns for commerce), keep in mind who you're dealing with as the ultimate buyer. Silver refiners will cheerfully accept lots the size of a loaf of bread, around 1000 ounces or a bag of 90%.

Copper refiners deal in TONS, not ounces. Just one ton is about 60 BAGS, or 120 boxes of cents. Do you have a way to store $30,000 in cents, and the means to move them?

Disagree. Silver disappeared long before it was worth 5x face. If anything, copper will go even faster, since 1000 cents a day is beer money, while 1000 quarters is a week's pay. The fact that one sorter posted a drop from 30 to 20% copper cents shows this.

Remember that silver was pulled in earnest a year or two after clad came out. It's been 29 years of attrition for the cents.

Pep Levin melted millions of silver coins before it was legal. Maybe someone remembers what happened to him.

When we bought silver and gold constantly, we paid as much as 99.4% of our selling price on silver and 98.4% on gold. We got as much as 99% of melt for gold from middlemen. These people handled precious metals deals, and at least one handled 1000 bags of silver in one day.

Those dealers just don't have the facilities to handle base metal like copper that takes up over 4000 times the space of gold or 100 times the space of silver for the same dollar amount.

The middlemen who do have the means to handle copper don't work on a percent or two, but more like double their money. Throw in shipping costs, and you'd be lucky to get 40% of melt for copper, unless you have enough to at least talk to a refiner. One dealer told me he had $20,000 face in copper cents, and even before the gubmint ban on melting, tried several copper refiners, all of whom turned him down.

biggfredd,
Yes, I realize that and the dealers that buy silver don't either (in general)but my thoughts are that the scrap metal buyers would likely be the ones to buy copper cents as they have the facilities.As posted by Doucet, they are paying about 66%.And I do know one of these scrap buyers..they are already thinking about it.So at that rate,you could double your money saving coppers at the current price.Don't sound bad from here.

1 million copper cents = $10,000 = 6667# = 24 five-gallon buckets

5 gallons water = 40#
5 gallons copper = 280#

5 gallon bucket = one square foot

Options:

1) ground level, slab construction. In 100 square feet, you can park a 3-ton (big) van or 14 tons of cents (28,000#)

2) ground level, over basement or crawl space. 280 is seven times the 40psf of modern construction, so it's just a matter of time before they drop into the

3) basement, on slab. When time to sell, how do you plan to carry over three tons of 280# buckets up stairs, and what do you have to haul them to the refinery?

Google remembers him well:

http://www.dvrbs.com/People/CamdenP...PepLevin.htm

Levin should serve as a reminder that the gubmint actually will enforce anti-melting laws.