Im not surprised they are after copper, it is weighing in for a really good price at the moment... My friend works as an electrician and makes a decent amount from the old wiring he strips out and takes to the scrappy!
Yeah, Boone County, WV...I drove through that county this morning on my way to work. Real bright bunch of folks live there. It's not quite as bad as the two guys who broke into a sealed mine to steal the metal left in there only to be trapped in there. Now one or both of them are suing the company who owns the mine for allowing them the ability to break into the mine and get trapped. They should have died, tbh.
Ah another reason the US Legal system is so stupid... and this type of thing is becoming common in the UK too
I work at six different cemeteries and we have a company wide notice right now to keep and eye on the grounds because of people breaking into the cemetery at night and stealing bronze markers and vases off of graves to sell to scrap dealers. Just how f-ing low do you have to be to steal from the dead? I think the scrap metal dealers should be prosocuted for buying them.
How low can people get? How long have you got?... They are committing a crime in that they are fencing stolen goods. But I agree that they should have some additional punishment to fit the heinous nature of the crime. Perhaps a one-year long obligatory appearance in the Japanese game show "Endurance".
I didn't ask how low people get, I just asked how low do you have to be to steal from the dead. I can't name which cemetery in particular (it's not one of the cemeteries that I cover anyways) but we've had 200 or 400 bronze markers stolen. These markers weren't just laying against a wall waiting to be set either. These were markers that were already affixed to the granite bases so that means they're working on at least 5 minutes time to remove the marker from the base. Not accounting the time it takes to load them into a truck (the bronze part of the marker itself can weigh from 20lbs to 50lbs depending on how large it is), we're looking at 1000 minutes or 16.6 hours roughly to remove these markers (this is for 200 markers). We'll average out the weight of those 200 markers to 20lbs and at roughly $2.5 a pound for bronze, they're making $10,000 or $602.41 an hour... nevermind. I can see why people take the risk now.
Only the pre-1992 ones, after that they are only plated in copper. 2p coins made before 1992 are more valuable as scrap metal rather than loose change, due to them containing 97% copper. After 1992 the Royal Mint produced 1p and 2p coins mostly made out of steel with a thin copper plating. One penny coins before 1992 are also approximately 50% more than their face value. 2p coins are now actually worth 3p each as scrap, this means 145,000 2p coins that would be worth ~£2,900 at a bank are actually worth ~£4,400 as scrap.
Costs more than 1c to produce pennies here too, though they're certainly not all-copper. Funny if not sad. But copper is so dead... fiber's where it'll be at. I'm assuming that's why the value of copper is going up, all the computer-realted stuff, but you never know.
Copper is still useful for other stuff. Really, what else are we going to make our mahoosive heatsinks out of?* *Apart from nickel, aluminium and silver (Or not, considering it's extremely expensive).
Copper is certainly not dead! The reason the scrap price has gone up so much is because raw copper costs have gone up. Copper isnt dead for data transfer, as its still waaaaay cheaper than fiber. That and you can't transfer electricity through fiber
I heard James Cameron say in the director's commentary for T2 that for the highway chase scene the crew laid out several miles of copper wires, and left them unguarded the first night, at which point they were stolen. Then they had to rent wire and cables from all over CA and the western states and hired a security team just for the wires. That was in the early 90's and our (US, of course) economy wasn't doing so great, and metal prices went up.
COndisering wire in any gauge wieghs tons in mile lengths. That pretty amazing. But how stupid do you ahve to be to cut a cord when you are the only grounded object?
Is it legal to do this? If I went to the bank and requested £500 in 2p's then traded them at a scrap dealer, I'd walk away with £750?
When I worked in the plumbing supply trade circa mid to late 90s, 10ft of 1/2 "L" (pressure) copper was IIRC around $5.80 USD, a year or so ago, I believe it had nudged up to $6.80 or so, now.... I believe north of $22. People would break into new house construction and steal all the pipe a decade ago, now it just happens that much more often.
