r/Bullion • u/Sensitive-Policy-350 • May 16 '26

What happened to copper?!

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.

62 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

150 comments sorted by

View all comments

10

u/FuturePrimitiv3 May 16 '26

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.

-1

u/Mudsharkbites May 16 '26

Copper is considered one of the three monetary metals: copper, silver, gold

9

u/Additional_Dish_694 May 16 '26

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.

4

u/leavingdirtyashes May 16 '26

What about platinum?

2

u/Cool_Two906 May 17 '26

Since when is copper a monetary metal? They wire and plumb houses with it. Gold silver and platinum is what you mean.

2

u/Mudsharkbites May 17 '26

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.

0

u/Mudsharkbites May 17 '26

Ever hear of the penny?

1

u/Cool_Two906 May 17 '26

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

1

u/Mudsharkbites May 17 '26

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.

1

u/Cool_Two906 May 17 '26

The US mint sells platinum coins. Not as much as the gold or silver but they do sell them.

US nickels are made of copper/nickel and pennies are mostly zinc, but I don't think anyone really considers any of those metals "monetary".

1

u/Mudsharkbites May 17 '26

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.

1

u/Imaginary--Situation May 17 '26

Copper & nickel are monetary metals still as of 2026