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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- As copper prices rise, thieves are trying to cash in by targeting businesses, construction sites and even homes.
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In may 04 copper was $1.16 lb. Today, 2 years later its about $3.62 lb. and rising.
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Actually, I have heard of this kind of copper theft going on for quite some while now.
All pennies minted since 1983 (some in 1982) are copper coated. About 3% copper. Rest is Zinc. Not worth much
George
The zinc cents are topcoated with a .0003 inch coating of copper. Need a BIG jar EdH
George
If they are old "wheat cents" (back says one cent) you would get much more selling them in the coin collector market.
He's dead, now, but he was in a business that built transformers. The company had run into the problem some years ago.
BTW, I remember a story told by a guy who helped to rewire a school. He asked the school if he could have the old wire -- which was a lot of wire -- and they said, "sure." Amazing.
Use to be, you'd put it in a barrel, add accelerant, and burn the insulation off. Doing so now and getting caught will get you in heap deep pile of trouble.
And as far as I know, it's often done that people reworking something haul away what they remove. That's often not a favor, but sometimes with huge amounts of metal, it's figured in as part of the payoff for the job.
Besides, the amount in the school job probably wouldn't be enough to get a good price from a reprocessor, but would be enough to be a problem getting rid of other than throwing in a landfill. Espcially when you consider the red tape a school would have to go through to sell it, minimum number of bids and all that.
Roger
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com
a place that buys metal. I'm pretty sure the stuff from the electric outfit had bare wire to start with.
I'm pretty sure you can get away with a lot more in more rural areas as far as burning insulation goes. I do know that our car inpsections don't include an emissions test.
they're adding it a few counties a year here in NC.
The argument is to start in the worse air quality areas, and then expand outward from those. Then when you add a county, the neighboring county will have lots of inspection stations already set up for emission testing while your county catches up.
Can't remember now if my county is next year or year after. They're adding about 10 a year I think.
Roger
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com
Because it makes the price of the inspection jump from about $14/yr, to more than $30/yr. We were sold this idea that inspections would force the cars doing the most polluting to clean it up before they could pass inspection. Good plan, right? But NO, the car has to be new enough to hook up to some computer, so older vehicles are exempt from the new inspections, and continue to get the cheap inspections without exhaust emissions testing when these vehicles are the most likely culprits!
Bah humbug.
Cindi
I remember as a kid (in the 60s) news reports of houses in the upscale part of town with old-fashioned copper rain gutters and downspots and window screens having the copper parts stolen right off the front of the house. Then aluminum prices went up too and siding was being ripped off. Thieves will be thieves.
dw
My mother once read that older houses once had lightning rods made of platinum. For some time after that, she would watch out for older houses that had been abandoned when she traveled, in case they had platinum lightning rods. 
with a NM dateline:
Southern NM has been devastated by closing down of mining and smelting sites due to low prices. Most likely the sites will stay down because of the cost of reopening.
Coins cost more to make than face value
Tuesday May 9, 11:27 pm ET
The next time someone offers you a penny for your thoughts, you might want to take them up on it.
For the first time in U.S. history, the cost of manufacturing both a penny and a nickel is more than the 1-cent and 5-cent values of the coins themselves. Skyrocketing metals prices are behind the increase, the U.S. Mint said in a letter to members of Congress last week.
http://biz.yahoo.com/usat/060509/13546347.html
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