I work in computer recycling. I spent the last 3 and a half years with Free Geek Vancouver, and now I'm working with a place called The Hackery. We know a thing or two about the value of copper.

Even doing it on an industrial scale we're not making much off of the stuff. Gold is by far the bigger concern.

Consider Intel heatsinks from the late P4 era on up. They have a beautifully machined slug of high purity copper in the base. If I had to pull a number out of my ass I'd say 5-6 ounces of the stuff. We get a couple bucks each for them. But nevermind that. I'm prepared to offer a special one time only price to the above commenters of only $20!! Just send it via paypal and we'll be happy to mail you one. We'll even print out a certificate of authenticity on our dot matrix printer.

Seriously, what is with these people? Nobody would argue that it was a great deal to buy gold at $9000 an ounce when the going rate is $1800. No one with a firm grasp on sanity would say how they were sitting on a fortune by snapping up rolls of toilet paper for $30 each. What makes copper any different?

Just because something might one day have more value doesn't mean you should pay 5 times the going rate for it NOW. The whole idea of investing is to buy low and sell high. Not buy astronomically high and then pray that the price somehow gets even higher. That's just lunacy.

OK. I'm in Australia, but let's run this calculation for US dollars, because I presume that's what you're talking about.

2. then take $20 and buy some copper bullion from the ebay sites you are referring to.

OK. I now own one pound of allegedly-.999 copper. (Which, from one of the less outrageous US dealers on ebay.com, actualy costs $17.99 plus $5 shipping, but let's be generous and say it was only $20 total.)

3. in 5 years time, you will know quite clearly which was a better place to store your earnings.

Given the lousy state of the US dollar and its lack of any great immediate-future prospects, $US20 put in a US bank today might, ignoring fees and the trivial interest that small deposits earn, have $15 worth of buying power in five years. Maybe only $10, if things really go to hell.

So if, five years from now, I can find someone willing to buy a pound of allegedly-.999 copper for an amount of dollars with buying power more than $20 now, I'll be a winner.

But since there is, I feel compelled to repeat, no real copper bullion market beyond these dodgy online traders, this will leave me searching for a greater fool. I might as well have invested in Beanie Babies.

Or, of course, I could just buy however many pre-1982 95%-copper US pennies my $20 would get. Here, as I write this, is a thousand of them for thirty bucks delivered. Let's say they're all so well-circulated that they only weigh 3 instead of their mint 3.1 gram mass; a thousand 3-gram 95%-copper pennies gives 2.85 kilos of copper, 6.28 pounds of it.

So I can buy more than six pounds of government-guaranteed copper for $30 delivered, or I can buy one pound of "bullion" copper that some dude says is pure for more than $20...

Seriously, it's as simple as that. This "bullion" is stupidly overpriced, and there is no real liquid market for it.

If you've got a bee in your bonnet about copper, either buy a slab from a bulk metals dealer, or get yourself a sack of whatever your local high-copper coins are, because there really is at least a somewhat liquid small-scale market for those.

Or enjoy spending the rest of your natural life trying to find a "bullion" dealer with prices anywhere near as good.

the spot price of copper is based on the avoirdupois pound of 16 oz. which is very different from the troy pound. you can easily research the difference between the two with google.

Uh, yes; one of my major points is that base metals are sold by the "ordinary" pound, and applying troy measurements to them is silly.

I think you may not have read my post, and all this interminable blather below it, as thoroughly as you think.

it is true that the LME/COMEX per pound price of copper (approx. $4/lb.) is a reflection of purchasing TONS of raw unrefined copper of varying purity.
a long ton, a short ton, or a tonne.
this means you would have to account for delivery, warehousing, security, insurance and be willing to secure funds of $8,000-$10,000 per ton.
you can NOT buy 16 oz. of .999 copper for $4/lb. ANYWHERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(i worked in the medical gas industry and laid copper pipes in dozens of facilities.)
the spot price of copper is based on the avoirdupois pound of 16 oz. which is very different from the troy pound. you can easily research the difference between the two with google.
you do raise a good point with why there is such a markup on the copper bullion.

-you can not use paper money or digital currency to:
a: conduct electricity
b: pump water to your sink
c: pump oxygen to your body while under surgery.
d: pump blood sucked out of your body while under surgery.
e: make landline phone calls.
f: pump a wide variety of high pressure gasses
however , copper can achieve these feats and then some.

aside from the reasons above:
- inflation. the dollar is weakening by the day. copper is not.
- copper bullion is an emerging business.
- there is a decent supply of it online, but where else can you get copper bullion, walmart? nope.
- copper bullion is smelted, minted, assayed, relief stamped, uncirculated, and very inexpensive compared to it's silver and gold counterparts.
- purchase a smelting facility, then try to sell ANY metal bullion for "the spot price" while making a profit, paying your employees, health, dental and fire insurance, lawyers and accountants, and paying off the interest on the loans you needed to buy the smelting facility in the first place.
that may help you understand why there is a "mark-up" or premium on the price of copper bullion.
while i agree that before investing any money into any venture one should research thoroughly, i also agree with taking a chance. i have not purchased any copper bullion, but i have purchased tons of copper. and i have made plenty of money selling, "working", fixing, delivering or installing that copper....
if anyone is looking for a get rich quick scheme, i would suggest something other than copper bullion. it stands to reason that if copper is your "thing", investing in copper mines would be a much better strategy to see profits.

i enjoyed reading, thank you
- James Miller (yes, from the James Miller Band)

Man, the stuff you said is right here, in the thread! wth? I called it like I saw it, and maintain my stand that you are a rude jackass.

Whatever. Do you even read the posts, or just skim them and retort with nonsense? This is like arguing with a ten year old.

Then you said you agreed with her, and called me a "rude jackass", and now it turns out that this was because you were upset about something I hadn't actually said.

So... yeah.

I thought the point of the thread was that copper was not an investment metal, and that people are getting ripped off buying it. That's what I got from it, anyway.

I found a pound slab on the bay for 6.95 with free shipping. I found another guy selling bulk for $5 a pound with free shipping, if you order 10 or more. I do agree that storage could be a problem, if one were to really want to "bunker down" on some copper. Pretty silly.

There was a lot that Mary said that you wanted sources for, but I didn't understand the hostility.

This post was about people selling "copper bullion", by the ounce, for absurdly inflated prices. Which they are still doing.

Of course copper has value. Of course there is a thriving market for copper scrap. Copper just doesn't have anything remotely like the value these scam artists straight-facedly put on it.

Mary's claim was that there was something special about the "bullion" copper that made it worth ten or more times spot price. I asked her to support this claim. She was unable to do so.

If you want to buy a huge slab of copper as an investment, go right ahead. It may indeed appreciate greatly.

Just don't buy your copper from people who pretend it is a bullion metal, with a real by-the-ounce market.

If I get ten pounds of copper from the bay for $6 a one pound bar, and the price rises astronomically in the next few years...then I suppose we won't see Danny give his tirades about it anymore.

Some of the eBay "bullion" dealers currently offer one-pound bars. The cheapest Buy-It-Now ones can, as you say, now be had for less than seven US dollars ex delivery, which is only about twice the current spot price for copper.

You could indeed possibly turn a profit on those. You'd do even better if you just lowballed the actual auctions for the bars until you managed to get one for a decent price. I contend that this is only likely to result in a profit if you value your time at zero, but I enjoy bargain-hunting as much as the next compulsive eBayer, so it could easily count as entertainment.

If you were buying ten bars then you'd want to find a dealer who offers bulk postage discounts, though. The cheaper ones don't seem to. This makes the actual price, even for ten bars, more than $US10 per unit for the Buy-It-Nows, which I contend moves this product back up into the "clearly a scam" category.

And it's easy to find one-pound bars that cost way more than this. You can pay more than $20 per bar if you're dumb enough.

Or you can, instead, buy your copper in the form of 95%-copper pre-1982 US pennies, ten pounds of which can be yours, delivered, for less than $US40. There's someone selling sixty pounds of those pennies for $US170.99 delivered at the moment; that's 57 pounds of copper for three bucks a pound.

The going rate for one-ounce "copper bullion" bars is currently $US10, at least. Hell, there are eBayers offering quarter-ounce copper "bullion coins" for that same price.

So obviously you shouldn't buy those.

Because it is, as I said, a scam.

Danny just keeps asking for web-source links and insisting that because people sell copper for inflated prices on the bay, then the whole thing must be crap. Then he screams about calling Mary's comments "abuse". C'mon. Grow up.

I am researching this, and have found that buying it for even double spot right now could be an investment. The people you take it to for resale (besides ebay?) are the recyclers, who pay spot. If spot grows to double or even ten times what you paid for it, then it's a good investment.

China is sucking up all of the copper it can, as the economy there grows. We're seeing economic events that have never happened before, worldwide. Including the possible return to a metal-based currency, as the US dollar faces collapse.

If I get ten pounds of copper from the bay for $6 a one pound bar, and the price rises astronomically in the next few years...then I suppose we won't see Danny give his tirades about it anymore.