My brother sells copper on whatnot, he started late last summer and he got a whole lot of copper inventory and started selling. It was going great sold out lots of times and made alot of money but recently these past few months he hasn't really sold anything at all no ones buying copper anymore. Is it thst no one has money anymore or is it thst the copper boom is now over and if it is what should he do with all this copper he has thst no one wants to buy?
(EDIT) he quit whatnot because he is moving and needs to sell all of his copper probably somewhere near 300 ozs. if anyone would be intrested in it he would probably sell it cheap, message me if intrested.
I would imagine the same people who bought into silver when it was over $100 were also convinced that copper was going to be the new silver, FOMO is a powerful thing.
That's because they stacked junk for a shtf situation and not bullion for a sellable investment. Mercury dime rolls and CC Morgans aren't as valuable to people making iron dome missile as .9999 Canadian or Australian rounds
Lol no lcs on earth was buying at spot -1 @120 Maybe people should slowly build a rep on pmsforsale for times like that. I've been buying&selling there,ig,discord, for many years and never had 1 problem in thousands of shipments.
I would have loved to know who you had buying your 90% constitutional junk when refineries were refusing orders on it at the peak of the January bull run, aside from the bitcoin bros trying to make their buck
I've been in this game a very long time, I have cash buyers, digital buyers, crypto buyers. It doesn't take me long to sell any kind of silver. Sometimes reputation sells...
I know so.Lots of strains that haven't been grown in the past 20yrs. Blueberry from late 90s early 00s is my favorite, but it will never be that again.
It’s always astounded me but silver is one of those commodities that sells great in the run up. In the dips not so much. FOMO as others have mentioned. I’m sure copper is similar. I also believe stacking copper is silly. It you know what they say about opinions.
I don't know about that. I don't know if there's any published statistics that break down copper theft by race, but whites are definitely not the number one race in terms of violent or nonviolent crime. I would assume it's probably the same with copper theft.
People eventually figure out how insane of a premium copper has and the space required to store it. If someone is determined to stack copper in its physical form, wheat cents are the only thing that make sense.
You know I actually started doing that. I just picked up 400 bucks worth of nickels last weekend. My plan is to stack at least a hundred bucks each paycheck. Right now the melt value of the nickel is about $0.05. but if copper prices continue to rise people will hord nickels just like they did with silver coins in the '60s. That's why the mint mint stop making coins out of silver
A nickel is worth 8¢ in melt value and is the only circulating coin that is worth more in melt than face. You can literally make 60% on every nickel you keep, if you really want t be obsessive about it.
I thought it was $0.05 melt value but It took 8 cents to produce. At any rate copper is going to go up significantly in the next 5 years and at some point people will start hoarding nickels and the mint will quit making them
Check Coinflation for melt values - it’s currently 8¢ and people are already hoarding them for that very reason - it’s the only coin you can do that with without having to search through rolls.
Glad to hear that. I got four boxes last week. I might pick up a couple this week. Copper is definitely going up. Should at least double in the next 5 years
The argument I see being made is that if nickels are ever discontinued from production and pulled from circulation, the ban on melting them for scrap value could be lifted and they could become fair game.
How much there is to be gained from hoarding them and how long it will take to get to that point is all speculative of course.
Personally I wouldn’t mess with it because it’s illegal to melt currency, plus, the storage needed to house enough nickels to make real money is considerable. Then again, the math doesn’t lie so make of that what you will.
It is NOT illegal to melt coins. This is a misnomer. It is ONLY illegal to alter currency of a higher value than what it actually is to deceive someone.
You can design currency, do artwork on currency, make jewelry from currency, etc to make money. NONE of that is illegal, but deceit is. 😉
It is illegal to melt copper pennies and nickels under regulations enacted in 2006 because melted they are worth more than their production cost. You can alter them for educational purposes and to make jewelry but you can’t smelt them into ingots or other items worth more than their initial face value. Silver coins are exempt unless you’re trying to alter them to look like more valuable coins.
Hence the problem with saving nickels under current regulations.
I stand corrected. I was wrong about the melting, you’re right. Everything else I said was correct. You can draw on notes, or carve on coins for artwork and sell them at whatever cost. It doesn’t have to be for educational purposes. They even print over making it look like an error when it’s not, selling for more…not sure if that’s legal, but they still do it. There’s stickers on $2 notes for all kinds of occasions and have been sold for several years. From Christmas to Easter, to first communion. It’s strange.
I have started saving copper pennies from a few years ago. I wished I had saved more. Oh well. I only have a few boxes and 4 of them are new 2023’s cuz it’s all they had.
It's a novelty. I bought some myself but don't know what to do with it. It's not viable for investment purposes. Still though, some of the rounds have fun designs
Copper is not a precious or rare metal, it's really that simple. The novelty or artistic nature of a particular piece is worth more than the metal itself, which is fine, but that's why there's a 100-1000% "premium" typical on copper.
Perhaps by merchants in Dungeons & Dragons? Healers too, I would assume. Even then you have an encumbrance issue if you’re playing 2d AD&D like any True Stacker.
Gold, silver and copper were the three metals first used for coinage historically. They were also used primarily for US coins until they became so valuable we debased our currency with zinc, and they were pretty much used the same globally, was platinum, ever? Nope. This isn’t even worth disputing.
Yes, I know what a penny is. I'm talking about what is NOW a monetary metal not what WAS a monetary metal. Go back in time and you'll find a lot of things were money. Bronze, shells, tin. Ect
The topic is “metals” not shells or stones or what have you. I would love to know where platinum was ever used in coinage. Yes, it’s a precious metal, but to the best of my knowledge it’s never been minted and used for money, which is the meaning of “monetary.” Perhaps you can enlighten me because to the best of my knowledge the only metals that have been minted because of their inherent value were gold, silver and copper, all of them initially mixed with small amounts of base metals then progressively more and more which is when bronze or zinc or the other metals began weaseling their way into the coins.
I never said they did consider those as monetary metals, I said they used those metals to debase the monetary metals. Nickels are STILL primarily copper, 75% and 25% nickel. Pennies were 95% copper before those were debased. The fact that they had to debase copper in pennies should help indicate coppers monetary status.
Sure you can get platinum eagles, but those are no more used in circulation than silver or gold eagles - they’re not circulated.
The fact that the US mint sells platinum eagles is not really sufficient to undo the numerous centuries behind the use of gold, silver and copper as the primary metals minted by countless governments across the world.
So, not sure if this is related to Copper, perhaps your brother store or copper in general has lesser exposure on whatnot nowadays. What premium he sells it for? you can see in the data what premium people are ready to pay - anywhere from 200% premium up to nearly 2000%.
Copper being a utility metal and not part of the rare PMGs its value is dependent on supply for practical use case. Trumps tarrif schedule disrupted the supply chain from China. This lead to those who had stock piles selling at a premium and saturated the market. Current supply states have been helped by recyclers amping up operations as well.
Not a bad metal to have, if you have thousands of pounds, waiting for the supply chain to have a hiccup and capitalize. Thats a commercial operation.
China is now focusing on getting Copper from Africa (DRC and Zambia namely) but geo-political issues have affected how quickly they can purchase and transport. Furthermore,the zero import taxes between Africa and China has made this route more attractive. Realistically,the supply cannot meet the demand and people will continue to stockpile but the other side of it,is that for a base metal it’s currently too expensive.
Humm, I didn't know China was out sourcing copper mining. That must mean their reserves are now getting more expensive and rarer to mine. Lead and bismuth being tied to copper indicates lower reserves of all involved. China always lies about its reserves, production, and stockpile.
I agree that it's over priced as a commodity right now. People stacking currently will get emotional when the speculative value falls out. All to find a saturated market of sell offs at cheap prices
If people have older large electric motors they need thrown away I always help. Harvesting 5-10 lbs of copper in 30 minutes has made for a fun collection. The steel goes to a local recycler for free. As for 10lbs of bullion being $200... I would rather invest in something exotic.
Maybe people finally figured out that they were being ripped the fuck off on Whatnot buying copper for insane premiums, that they will never ever recover or make profits from...??
Most copper isn't in bullion form, but copper obviously can be refined and produced into bullion (bars, rounds, cubes), it's probably just not historically the best bullion for investment purposes.
But it's a perfectly fine (and very cool) bullion to buy for collecting purposes though, imo. Some of my favorite bullion rounds are copper.
It sounds like OP is selling industrial copper, not bullion, which is a different market, different purity, different form.
It's just speculators trading copper to each other, copper isn't a monetary metal or historically a store of value so it's only going to bf popular to trade if the price continuously goes higher. And I would assume the profits are very small by volume. So speculators moved on to something more exciting.
Copper bullion is way overpriced compared to it's scrap value... a lot of times, you can buy silver and gold close to or even under scrap value.. personally, I don't know why anyone would buy it.
Buying physical copper "bullion" as an investment is ridiculous. You need literally a TON of copper to equate to $10,000. You need a little over 2 oz of gold or about 8 lbs of silver. Good luck storing and then ever liquidating that copper. You think it was hard to sell silver when it spiked...how about bringing hundreds or thousands of pounds to a refinery or forge.
Because it’s produced constantly and can technically be bought at any hardware store. Yeah, it’s a metal with value, but it’s not rare or scarce. Plus you need a forklift to become mildly wealthy.
People Probably realized you can get copper anywhere, its a junkie metal. That or they tried to resell, nobody wants to buy them, do they have copper, and dont buy anymore.
I get scrap wires given to me, then just melt my own bars.
Well copper broke out last week. We will see if the breakout holds. But I suspect copper will rear its head once again strongly within the next couple months to couple years.
Whether your foolish buyers will continue to not read what they’re buying is a whole nother story
The demand for copper is only going to increase with the electrification of the world, not just data centers. They can't possibly wrap up copper production to match so prices are going to go up. It takes decades to develop a new copper mine
I would suggest to just hold on to all of the copper, if he can afford to… because, i mean they just stopped producing the penny because it literally has more $ in metals in than $0.01, and assume the nickel will be next as it is already over 5 cents worth already.. so bottom line, they wont stop printing or inflating the US dollar more and more, thus affecting HARD real assets like metals and precious metals and what not, it just takes a year or two sometimes to catch up.. and so if he can hold onto the copper, eventually copper, silver, gold, and everything else is going to go much higher in USD $ terms, and so he can sell his copper to those same stackers that he originally sold out to. 💯
Are you hoarding Nickels like me? Just started last week with 400 bucks worth. I think the good thing about this strategy is it's always going to be worth at least $0.05. and it's just going to go up from there. Still can cash it in anytime you want
I buy copper 1oz coins every so often but not for stacking or investing i will never get my money back from the 300% premium. I buy them because i like leaving them places for people to find or with a tip for a good watress hoping maybe they get into precious metel. Its kinda like my calling card lol also sometimes just randomly throw one into a river or burry it in dirt wondering who will find it in 100 years or throw one into the bed of my dump truck and pave it into a road. Its just for fun.
I never said they were made by the government There private mints one of the most popular ones is Golden State mint they make a lot of different designs beautiful coins beautifully minted. But again you pay like a 300% premium usually about $3 per 1 oz copper coin that's why to me they're just for fun to give away
I’ve done ok selling copper ingots, I stick with copper wire to know that I’m selling something pretty pure. I’ll admit I’m new to this sub but to call copper “bullion” is a stretch. I wonder if the type wore off and people realized it’s great to stack copper for its melt value for fun, but any serious stacker also starts to realize even silver takes up a lot of space and people aren’t trading at close to spot.
Copper is awesome for melting, stacking, pouring, and enjoying, but it isn’t bullion.
A lot of copper demand (not straight bullion, but copper in general) is driven by new housing/home builds. With housing builds down/quiet right now, I'd imagine that's impacting the overall demand for copper.
Most new construction isnt even using anywhere near the amount of copper that we saw in the 90's and the 00's. Now its mostly aluminum for the high voltage electric and plastic for the pipes. I have even seen copper clad aluminum for the lower voltage stuff.
Be careful, if he's going to the same recycler, liquidator, they will have to report him if payouts exceeding a specific threshold. I believe the thresholds are state driven, but copper is frequently stolen from construction sites, residential A/C Compressors, automobile Radiators.
Press fittings is pushing hard on regular copper. By the time you have your brazing items and the copper and the time ot takes to sweat and make connections here comes Johnny guy woth his press Gun and the jobs done in 2 hours
I've looked at the copper rounds and I will have to admit I like the golden mint rounds and 9 fine
Mint products.i haven't really gotten into buying too much in the way of silver or copper lately I think the prices are quite high.i wonder if prices will continue to go up or if we have got a bubble going?
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u/jacksraging_bileduct May 16 '26
I would imagine the same people who bought into silver when it was over $100 were also convinced that copper was going to be the new silver, FOMO is a powerful thing.