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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;-jeffB, post: 6598041, member: 27832&quot;]Well, &quot;safe&quot; in the sense that copper will always be useful, but I don&#039;t know what the buy-sell spread is like or how it will change.</p><p><br /></p><p>But the <i>mass</i> and <i>volume</i> per dollar for copper... ugh. The price of copper is near its all-time high today, and you <i>still</i> need over <b>four hundred POUNDS</b> of the stuff to buy that canonical nice suit/toga/whatever that an ounce of gold will purchase.</p><p><br /></p><p>To support a retirement, or a family&#039;s post-apocalyptic existence, you might want a million bucks. In dollars or crypto, it&#039;s a few bits in a storage device; essentially zero mass and volume. In gold, it&#039;s a cube about four inches on a side, weighing a bit less than 45 pounds (but, of course, you&#039;d have stacks of coins or bars instead). In silver, it&#039;s four cubic feet, weighing about a ton and a quarter; as coins, rounds or bars, think of it filling part of a closet, and requiring <i>lots</i> of trips up and down the stairs if you want to move it.</p><p><br /></p><p>In copper, it&#039;s almost <b>500</b> cubic feet, weighing over <b>100 tons</b>. If you have it as wire or pipe, it occupies a lot more volume than that. On the positive side, anyone wanting to steal it <i>all</i> needs lots of time and equipment; on the down side, if you don&#039;t want <i>any</i> of it stolen, it&#039;s a lot harder to hide or secure.</p><p><br /></p><p>I <i>have</i> &quot;invested&quot; in stuff that has an even worse volume-to-value ratio. But I looked at it more as entertainment, seeing how cheaply I could get (say) old test equipment at the local university surplus store and then how much I could get for it on eBay. That was fun, and made me some money -- but I lost interest before I sold all the equipment, so now that&#039;s more of my garage occupied with large, bulky dust collectors. <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie11" alt=":rolleyes:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /> (And unlike gold or silver or copper, test equipment really <i>doesn&#039;t</i> hold its value over time.)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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