What's up with copper plate pricing vs. scrap?

[alha]

next time let me know you need it and i will help you out

Thank you, that is very kind of you.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

As a business owner tells me time and again...

You charge what the market will bear.

If enough people refuse to pay that amount, the price will come down. (Deflation) But sellers will be very reluctant to sell at a lose.

It's more like "You can't charge what the market won't bear". On one level the selling price of sheet copper includes the cost of transport, administration, taxes, labour and a small slice of the machinery used to process the stuff. On another level there isn't enough of a profit margin in that price, to let someone else step in and capture the market with a lower but viable price.

If someone tries to sell 2x4 timber or even standard plumbing pipe at a really desirable profit, items available from a host of sources, he has painted a target on his back. It might be even more so with 6-32 screws, of which you can buy thousands by mail. It is a bit less clear with something like 3/16in. copper plate, which might be a near-monopoly, and sells in far smaller quantities than the above examples. It costs just as much to transport, per pound, and demands just as expensive machinery. But my guess is that there is no exploitable gap between cost and retail.

[alha]

That sounds like a reasonable explanation, and the last few sentences summarize the situation pretty accurately I believe.

[Jon]

I think that the supply lines are still flushing out at the higher prices. Prices always go up quickly, but take a long time to come down.

[bangerjim]

We mine Cu here in AZ......TONS of it....yet it is expensive to buy. I can see tons of plated-out electrodes coming down the highway from the mines to the smelters. Scrap price you get paid is pretty low, but try to buy some and it is $6.00+/#. But that is FINISHED plate/rod/sheet, not range scrap jackets!!!! Big difference.

Last time I bought some 4x4x1/8" plates they were $5/pound. Clean, bright product.

Do not compare what you are paid for scrap to what you will pay for finished materials!

banger

[jonp]

All this talk of copper prices reminds me of a roof I replaced for a lady in AZ when I was in college. She needed a roof replaced and offered to let our University Chapter of The Wildlife Society have it if we did the work and she also bought the new shingles. IE: all the stuff was ours. Her roof was solid copper. Sheets of it and it also used copper nails. First one I'd ever seen like it. Several pick-ups of copper roofing, nails, flashing, gutters everything. OY!!!

[bangerjim]

Many government buildings are copper roofs. A lot of state capitol domes are copper. And they are now starting to use it in commercial architectural designs again due to the beautiful green it turns. And it is almost a "forever" roof!

How about a pure TIN roof! I remember when I was a kid the old government fish hatchery outside of town was torn down and the roof was real solid TIN "sheet metal". Not that hot-dipped Zn plated steel stuff we have today. But back then (the Dark Ages!) Sn was not worth what it is today. There was probably a quarter ton of the stuff hauled away to the scrap yard. I managed to get some to cast tin soldiers with!

banger

[jonp]

Many do and the dome on our state capitol is gold leaf but you ever heard of someone that just gave it away to git rid of that "$**&$%^#" roof?

[hiram1]

i have a lot of .010 cu in sheet up to 16 in.we just scrap it so if some one needs a little of it let me know

[bangerjim]

Living here in the Silicon Desert and with all the semiconductor industries, I see rolls of copper foil at the junk yards. Nice stuff. I have gathered up different sizes and thicknesses of it. Never know when one may need some!!!!

I remember back when I was a young kid they replaced the gold foil on the Iowa State House dome. The entire thing used only a small amount of 24k gold. I have many books of real 24k gold leaf I use in antique restorations and it IS very thin! Very tricky to use. But fun.

bangerjim

[Ballistics in Scotland]

We mine Cu here in AZ......TONS of it....yet it is expensive to buy.

Most of a house is sand, clay, lime and gravel, but just try having one built for a reasonable selling minus buying profit on those.

[bangerjim]

Most of a house is sand, clay, lime and gravel, but just try having one built for a reasonable selling minus buying profit on those.

You go it. Most people do not stop & think of the hundreds of pounds of Cu pipe & wire that are in the average home! The economy in several mining towns around AZ is directly tied to the housing and construction market health....strictly because of Cu prices. Many hundreds of good jobs are in there.

[dtknowles]

Most of a house is sand, clay, lime and gravel, but just try having one built for a reasonable selling minus buying profit on those.

I accept your point but the contents of a house vary by design. You ever heard of a log home. They were very popular in Maine when I was growing up both the traditional and modular log homes. Down south here we have houses on stilts because of storm flooding and they are also almost all wood with metal roofs. If you count gypsum as clay or lime they have some if they have drywall interiors but other interiors are common.

Tim

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The economics are the same with logs. The purchase price of logs, and the profit your builder takes on them, is greatly inflated by a host of legitimate production costs and overheads. This also applies to 3/16in. copper plate, except that many of the cost of producing an item in very limited demand are just as great as for one that every builder uses every day. The customer always pays those (plus profit), and it will be a smaller number of customers, and capital tied up for longer waiting for them to turn up.