Copper, listed as a commodity price, currently 11/12/11) is about $3.50/pound.
Folks looking to invest in some copper bullion bars or rounds often see this price and then get confused or even angry when they discover that they cannot actually buy a pound , 100 or even 10o0 pounds for a small fee over the commodity listed price.
Investing in copper direct from a mine would be like trying to store barrels of crude in in your back yard. Neither make sense.
Copper Bullion is much more than base refined copper. In order for copper to be recognised as Copper Bullion, it must be extra refined, milled, rolled and stamped. You then have a basic Copper Bullion bar. Coining into rounds requires even more work.
This article will attempt to clear up the mystery of why copper bullion is priced in realtion to spot copper. Please pay attention, as this small amount of information might make you a large amount of money.
The biggest thing to know is that spot per pound price is a quote that copper manufacturing facilities pay copper mines for a 2.3 metric ton bundle of copper cathodes.
What? What is a Cathode?
One cathode is typically a 280 pound sheet of copper with a 99.99 purity. Without going into an engineering and mining dissertation, just know that cathodes are the end result of the process of copper mining. What started out as a piece of mountainside is now high grade copper cathode, ready for manufacturing, coin making, etc. Here is a likn to the entire process. http://www.kennecott.com/ore-to-more/
Hopefully, you now know that the coin shop or website selling copper bullion bars is not doubling their money on you.
Although copper is the first metal pulled from the ground and use by men, we currently have a fairly new market in copper bullion.
Below is nice example of old copper money. These are Aztec trading hoes. The Aztecs were among the first to devise a trade system that used a medium for exchange other that product, for product. Aztec hoes are thin pieces of fairly pure copper about 5 inches long and about 1.5 inches wide.
Over the centuries, copper has been used as a stable form of wealth. Pure copper to not so pure bronze has a long history of coinage and still remains popular in countries that do not have a stable paper money system…Seems like that is a catchy theme.
Here is a shot of some more recent copper coinage. Notice most are of European and N. American origin.
Turns out that copper stores longer than say corn or pork bellies and is much more stable than, say oil. Fact is, commodities are notoriously unstable with copper there to kind of keep things smother.
Back to YOU owning some copper for protection against crazy currency possibilities, especially the DOLLAR.
With most copper being made into wire, you might think that buying up a bunch of fine bare No.1 grade copper wire is a good idea….It is NOT. As of today, the price of copper wire from an electrical supply company works out to be over $17 per pound and smaller amounts from, say Home Depot will run you over $22 per pound. That makes a poor copper investment for 2 reasons. First, the price is too high; second, wire not being assayed is hard to cash out except at the scrap yard and they are paying less that LME price.
So now here we are with crazy gold and silver prices, a nearly depression economy, a threat to officially weaken the dollar credit rating and China, with all of those dollars our buying up all of the copper mines and stockpiles that they can get their claws on. (Don’t worry about the USA strategic copper stockpile, the US dumped all holdings by 1994 and currently holds ZERO copper).
If you are still here, congratulations! We are proudly the USA number one copper bullion bar and round dealer and are hoping that you have read and investigated enough for you to make a copper bullion purchasing decision right now.
Do yourself a favor and buy some copper from WWW.CopperBullionCoin.com. We sell to many resellers that are making a nice instant profit and to investors that just want to buy and hold on to some pure copper in small, trad-able amounts.
If it turns out that China does abandon the dollar and announce a world class copper currency, my USPTO slogan “Copper is the new Silver ©”, will be a fact to thank me for later.
One last thing. If you still have NOT investigated this information for yourself, at least look at this Wikipedia article for a completely factual, non commercial informational POV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_copper
Titanium is a metal having the chemical symbol is Ti. It is one of the Platinum Group Metals (PGMs)and when discovered was named for the Greek gods or Titans.
