We are having a lot of copper being stolen from power stations, New bldgs be constructed, junk yards,and other places. Is this happening to your city? Also I was wondering how many pennies are in a pound? I heard that copper was selling at about $2. LB>
Yeah, it's happening nationwide. There was a story about it on NPR a few weeks back. I'm not sure how many cents are in a pound but I think copper is at $3.06 a pound last I checked.
I work on construction sites here in Indiana and yes it's rampant. Plumbers are getting hit HARD. Thieves go into "roughed" buildings and cut out all of the copper pipes. I know a few houses that have been hit twice. Scrap dealers here are supposed to ID now for large amounts or lengths of copper pipe. They don't do it as they should. My brother's nephew runs a plumbing outfit and he marks all of his pipe now. Good thing as he just found a bunch at a scrap yard and as it turned out the thief was ID'd and caught.
Correct Also in Phoenix, which is experiencing a construction boom, has been hit very hard by the copper thiefs. They busted a meth-lab here and the whole backyard was all stolen copper plumbing and wire from condtruction sites.
But unfortunately that's only 95% copper, so it's considered a low grade of copper and you would be lucky to get half the going rate of copper for such (unless you know where there is a middleman so you cut out one of the profit takers). My question is: Does anyone know if scrap dealers in the US are accepting CANADIAN pennies, as the US Mint's order only applies to US coins?
I don't know the going rates, etc., but I'm guessing the profit margin of converting Canadian pennies (worth about 10% more than a US penny) at a scrapper would take a LOT of canadian pennies to overcome the time and travel costs.
Depends on how close one lives to the border, or if one already crosses the border on a regular basis (such as for a job). I don't think I could ever bring myself to melt down even canadian pennies, but I do find plenty of them searching US cent rolls. I actually find more canadian pennies than I do wheat cents.
Yep, it is happening here in Central Fla. too. Our electricians and a/c people are getting hit very hard!!
Yah I've heard about hi copper prices. I have about 300ft of the old time welding cable which is hi grade and thicker than whats used these days. Some friends have been advising me to run it to the recycle center. I'll bet the boom in China is driving the price up as for gas and other metals also. Around here they have been steeling man hole covers, the metal ends up in China they found.
