Realcent.org

April 29, today copper closed at $4.50 a pound making 1 Real Cent worth 3 cents.

It has been creeping up this year. Mark the date.

Infrastructure spending can only drive copper higher. Lumber is already sky high.

Exciting times for copper, hard to believe silver is still only half its 2011 high...

I need to sort some more cents.

The electric vehicle push is going to require a way larger increase in copper use than silver use.

I just had to move my copper hoard again this month due to some home renovation projects. They are are all in rolls in $25 boxes. A total of 147 boxes for $3,675 face value. The jump in the price of copper puts that hoard close to $11,000 melt value. I don’t feel so bad now about accumulating so much but I still wonder if it was all worth it.

Reading the news, copper passed the $10,000 per tonne mark on the same day.

Round numbers are interesting, but my mind doesn't convert easily from imperial pounds to long tonnes.

coppernickel wrote:April 29, today copper closed at $4.50 a pound making 1 Real Cent worth 3 cents.

It has been creeping up this year. Mark the date.

A gain of about 29% (from $3.50ish to $4.50ish) in the first 4 months of the year is way beyond what I’d call creeping. I bet there are a ton of people who gave up on copper, say, 3-5 years ago and STILL have no idea what the price is!

willy13 wrote:The electric vehicle push is going to require a way larger increase in copper use than silver use.

EV’s will also require nickel, the higher purity stuff that comes from cold weather places like Canada and Russia.

And today the U S cent is worth $0.0310691...the nickel is worth more than 120% of it face value...lets go metals!

And if the ^^^^article is correct the cent would increase to nearly $.05 in Cu value...wowzer!

The quote from the cnbc article "Copper is the new Oil" is an amazing summation of what is happening with the worlds obsession with electrifying the world. I will go farther and say copper can no longer be called a predicter of an economic boom. Its use will be too important whether the economy is stagnet or booming. Its more than just the copper that goes into electric cars, its the infrastructure that will get that electricity to the cars. There is no other metal that can do it, and the laws of physics can not be changed. I will give an example. Even if we developed a super dense battery that battery would still need to be fed the same amount of electricity. Electric motors are already efficient, it will always take x amount of energy to move a car. Currently 30 min quick chargers use a lot of copper to transfer that energy to the battery. So much energy that some designs have water cooling to keep the copper from over heating. Which means they really should have more copper in them because any heat thats created during the transfer of electricity is energy loss into heat. And if we went with the slow chargers only that are in people homes, we would see the same problem, but at the power stations. When everyone got home at 5:30 pm and plugged there cars in the current draw would me massive, requiring massive amounts of copper or energy would be lost to heat. Battery technologies will change, changing the demand for various metals like lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese. But copper is the only metal that can transfer the energy efficiently. Silvers conductivity is only slightly better than copper and is obviously way more expensive. Aluminum is cheaper but is way less conductive. Aluminum wire would have to be massive in size to transfer the energy needed. It truly is an exciting time for us penny hoarders!

It's exciting to see. I don't know if it has ever been 3x face before, but I don't remember seeing it. I stopped sorting years ago but I still have all the copper pennies I got then. They stopped making copper cents in 1982. Maybe after 40 years they'll finally be driven out of circulation.

scyther wrote:It's exciting to see. I don't know if it has ever been 3x face before, but I don't remember seeing it. I stopped sorting years ago but I still have all the copper pennies I got then. They stopped making copper cents in 1982. Maybe after 40 years they'll finally be driven out of circulation.

My 2 ton hoard doesn't mind. Gresham's law in effect.

I don't sort like I used to, but I still keep the coppers. I'm getting a lot less Cu pennies in change than I used to... maybe 5-10% copper, the rest is zinc.

Anyone here still sorting $25 boxes? What is the copper to zinc ratio you are seeing?

fasteddy wrote:And if the ^^^^article is correct the cent would increase to nearly $.05 in Cu value...wowzer!

For those of us who held on to our hoard... a pretty decent investment. All you need is patience.

Maybe I'll cash them in 30-40 years from now

willy13 wrote:The quote from the cnbc article "Copper is the new Oil" is an amazing summation of what is happening with the worlds obsession with electrifying the world. I will go farther and say copper can no longer be called a predicter of an economic boom. Its use will be too important whether the economy is stagnet or booming. Its more than just the copper that goes into electric cars, its the infrastructure that will get that electricity to the cars. There is no other metal that can do it, and the laws of physics can not be changed. I will give an example. Even if we developed a super dense battery that battery would still need to be fed the same amount of electricity. Electric motors are already efficient, it will always take x amount of energy to move a car. Currently 30 min quick chargers use a lot of copper to transfer that energy to the battery. So much energy that some designs have water cooling to keep the copper from over heating. Which means they really should have more copper in them because any heat thats created during the transfer of electricity is energy loss into heat. And if we went with the slow chargers only that are in people homes, we would see the same problem, but at the power stations. When everyone got home at 5:30 pm and plugged there cars in the current draw would me massive, requiring massive amounts of copper or energy would be lost to heat. Battery technologies will change, changing the demand for various metals like lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese. But copper is the only metal that can transfer the energy efficiently. Silvers conductivity is only slightly better than copper and is obviously way more expensive. Aluminum is cheaper but is way less conductive. Aluminum wire would have to be massive in size to transfer the energy needed. It truly is an exciting time for us penny hoarders!

Nice post Willy.

Recyclersteve wrote:

willy13 wrote:The quote from the cnbc article "Copper is the new Oil" is an amazing summation of what is happening with the worlds obsession with electrifying the world. I will go farther and say copper can no longer be called a predicter of an economic boom. Its use will be too important whether the economy is stagnet or booming. Its more than just the copper that goes into electric cars, its the infrastructure that will get that electricity to the cars. There is no other metal that can do it, and the laws of physics can not be changed. I will give an example. Even if we developed a super dense battery that battery would still need to be fed the same amount of electricity. Electric motors are already efficient, it will always take x amount of energy to move a car. Currently 30 min quick chargers use a lot of copper to transfer that energy to the battery. So much energy that some designs have water cooling to keep the copper from over heating. Which means they really should have more copper in them because any heat thats created during the transfer of electricity is energy loss into heat. And if we went with the slow chargers only that are in people homes, we would see the same problem, but at the power stations. When everyone got home at 5:30 pm and plugged there cars in the current draw would me massive, requiring massive amounts of copper or energy would be lost to heat. Battery technologies will change, changing the demand for various metals like lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese. But copper is the only metal that can transfer the energy efficiently. Silvers conductivity is only slightly better than copper and is obviously way more expensive. Aluminum is cheaper but is way less conductive. Aluminum wire would have to be massive in size to transfer the energy needed. It truly is an exciting time for us penny hoarders!

Nice post Willy.

Copper $4.52 today melt value at 3X again!

Coinflation shows copper at $10.0773 today! and the Cu penny at $0.066 each! C'mon Adam raise your prices for copper pennies. I hope it lasts...it also show Nickel below $1.50 boooo!

I thought I would have fun on coinflation....put in my copper pennie $ amount and it is now worth over 46K $ Oh how nice!

Wonder why coinflation is so far off

I also saw the same thing on coinflation. If you go to Kitco metals, you can see the correct price which is currently 4.49

It looks like a data entry error on the Coinflation website. The current nickel price entered as the price of copper and the current aluminum price as the price of nickel. What I find most interesting is how this mistake also shows up as a higher calculated melt value for US nickels (8.7 cents) despite such a low per pound nickel price being used. The 75% copper content really makes a difference.

I also pulled up Coinflation today and saw those goofy errors. I got very excited for just a few seconds - lol