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Is anyone else hoping metal prices go down?

With prices this high and going even higher:

1) Metal theft is going to be an even bigger problem.

2) There's going to be more competition for all kinds of scrap. Fewer people will be giving away their scrap and more people will be looking for it.

It doesn't seem the prices will go down in the near future, due to the demand, especially China. Another problem high prices cause is the long lines at the scrap yard. Prices are nice now, but the supply does seem to be harder to come by.

Wouldn't bother me if prices went down. When scrap prices are sky high, so are the prices of wire and conduit. I use lots of wire and conduit. I also worry more about theft when scrap prices are sky high.

I hate to play the devil's advocate but I hope they continue to rise. Yes, higher prices mean theft but a copper birder feeder in yard will be recognized for its copper value and stolen if copper is $2 a pound or $10 pound if needed.

For the average joe like me copper prices do not affect me/or as much as anything else. Higher copper is like gasoline or food- get used to it, everything is going up. I also hunt these things down and when the prices of metal adjust lower- say copper hits $1.50 a pound like it did recently- it still doesnt improve my chances of finding it by the curb or at goodwill. With so much hype it will remain under lock and key, not carelessly thrown out becuase the price has fallen. I do not see my salvation army prices copper bowls from 1.99 to .99 etc because of lower prces.

This can be said for zinc and aluminum and such. My neighbor recently got new siding and he kept old aluminum siding because its so valuable 'they are ripping it off houses'. He kept it during the aluminum crash a year or two ago and wont part with it because its 'aluminum' regardless if its .50 or 1.12 a pound, not enough to justify scrapping it.

with the price of gas so high I am glad that the prices of metal are up you use quite a bit of gas finding and taking down your scrap to the yard

i visited the Colliseum in Rome on my honeymoon. If you have ever seen it, then you know that half of it is a ruin while the other half still stands. The part that is ruined you can see where big chunk were hollowed out. I was told that this was done to salvage the metal. In fact, it may have collapsed because scrappers took the metal out. No one knows for sure, or whether it was Romans or Vandals.

hobo finds wrote:with the price of gas so high I am glad that the prices of metal are up you use quite a bit of gas finding and taking down your scrap to the yard

My thoughts exactly.