Should I hold on to my aluminum and copper?

I need some advice on my scrap. I am not in a big hurry to sale and have the space to keep it. Here is what I have saved up. From saving wire from working on stuff for years and saving aluminum I probably will have 2 or 3 of the 55 gallon drums full of stripped copper. I probably will have around 250 to 300 pounds of aluminum. I want to purchase some type of small building, portable barn or shipping container for a side business.

With that said it would be nice to sale this summer so I could use the funds to help with the building purchase. But if the scrap will go up a lot in a year I can wait. I probably will sale the aluminum unless it would double or triple within a year but I doubt that. As far as the copper I can store 2 or 3 drums out of the way and wait.

I am not hurting for the money of the copper but it would be nice to sale. So does it look like copper will be still low for a while or does anyone think in the next 5 years it will go up?

Save the copper and sell the Alum. Alum sucks no matter what the price is. It takes up too much room for the amount it weighs. Thats just my opinion.....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by willy3486

I need some advice on my scrap. I am not in a big hurry to sale and have the space to keep it. Here is what I have saved up. From saving wire from working on stuff for years and saving aluminum I probably will have 2 or 3 of the 55 gallon drums full of stripped copper. I probably will have around 250 to 300 pounds of aluminum. I want to purchase some type of small building, portable barn or shipping container for a side business.

With that said it would be nice to sale this summer so I could use the funds to help with the building purchase. But if the scrap will go up a lot in a year I can wait. I probably will sale the aluminum unless it would double or triple within a year but I doubt that. As far as the copper I can store 2 or 3 drums out of the way and wait.

I am not hurting for the money of the copper but it would be nice to sale. So does it look like copper will be still low for a while or does anyone think in the next 5 years it will go up?

---

I would sell the alum to free up the space, I dont think its coming back up anytime soon, within 5 year like you said.... it might, no one knows. The copper I would wait, it has been heavily tanking recently.....

If you are buying buildings with the sale of aluminum, I am in the wrong universe or dimension or location on Earth.

I bought copper for $3 and $4 per lb almost 10 years ago thinking it’s going to “go way up” and I will sell it for a profit.
Well atleast I can have a copper tombstone when I die so people can know what I did with it.

Aluminium is made ( smelted ) in medium/large sized paddling pool sized 'Cells'. Made of Carbon blocks and they are quite expensive to make.
If they cool down, they crack where the joins are.
So its not easy to 'just turn a few cells off' or turn off a line of cells ( normally 50 + )
Each cell makes a ton a day.
Since all of the cells in each line are connected end to end, like batterys, they have to juggle the setup when they take a cell out of service. Mostly to replace the whole cell unit. It would take too long to describe how the cells made up , and any explanation would be a bit inaccurate.

But, @ $160,000 ( from what i was told, say US$100,000 ) to refurbish a cell. They won't be wanting to take perfectly good cells out of use.
So they will still be making Aluminium even if there's no immediate buyer for it. Untill the cell needs replacing.
I guess then they will take it out of the circuit. Any excess Aluminium made would probably be kept untill the price gets up again & it will provide $ to refurbish the cells as they are needed.

One other thing is. Smelters use a very very stable amount of electricity. Often that powers generated just for the smelter & & its not a case of just sending that power somewhere else.
At our NZ Smelter, the electricity is made at a huge specific hydropower station.
The station is between a very large lake & the sea. All of the water goes thru the turbines generating electricity, theres a small amount that does go down the river that used to drain the lake.
But that rivers a lot smaller than it used to be, they cannot just send all of the water from the now several metres higher lake. So its gets turned into electricity no matter what.

Its High voltage transmission lines & transformers are made to do the job of supplying the smelter and one small city & not much more.
Now thats a problem.
They dont want to make excess Aluminium, but the powers got to be used.
So i see that the oversupply of Aluminium will continue for a long time. So its price will keep dropping and it will take a long time to get back up there.
Aluminiums cost is also largely dependent on the cost of electricity. Its often called 'Solid electricity'.
With oil fuel prices dropping, power price drops, making cheaper Aluminium feasible to a extent.

But from what i can see, no new airplanes for quite a while. Less cars being made. Excess hydropower electricity. Low oil fuel prices mean lower electrical bills.
Aluminium being made regardless of it being sold, untill potlines are taken out of commision, and the electrical grids been adjusted to suit.
The Aluminium industry is in for a huge shakeup. Rock bottom prices. Whole smelters being shut down ( its already happened ). Power grids will be adapted, probably at the best time too, low Copper prices & higher unemployment.
Coal & oil fired power generators might shut down in preference to hydropower. ( They will in NZ, most of our powers hydrogeneration & coal & gas for peak periods, + wind )
Interesting times ahead.

Like others said. I’d sell the aluminum and keep the copper. I took a load of ferrous in this am cause I needed it off my trailer. Bare bright on the price board was at 1.50 ish I think.

Quote:

---

Like others said. I’d sell the aluminum and keep the copper. I took a load of ferrous in this am cause I needed it off my trailer. Bare bright on the price board was at 1.50 ish I think.

---

My non-ferrous guy used to post this prices on-line but now they don't, I guess I could always call. If you're "bare bright" was about $1.50 then 32 Cu in your area is probably down another 20-30 cents...?

Been checking spot copper for a couple of months now. Given the overall picture .... it looks like copper and brass are down due to lack of demand. Imo ... this isn't a good time to sell unless you're hard up and really need the money.

I've been planning on stockpiling for at least a year .... maybe two or three.

It would be kool to have something like a bench top sized shredder. Shred all that copper into little 1/4" sized bits ... box it up and forget about it for awhile. Palletize it up all neat and tidy then ship it out of state for better prices.

~ Don't mind me ... just daydreaming. ~

If you dont need the money then sell it all and buy gold or silver with it. one takes up way less space. two the chances of gold or silver going up in value in the shorter term is higher then copper. Nothing wrong with turning 10 pounds of copper into 1 oz of silver

Quote:

---

If you're "bare bright" was about $1.50 then 32 Cu in your area is probably down another 20-30 cents...?

---

You all probably got the drift but my "32 CU" should have been "#2 CU"...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hills

Been checking spot copper for a couple of months now. Given the overall picture .... it looks like copper and brass are down due to lack of demand. Imo ... this isn't a good time to sell unless you're hard up and really need the money.

I've been planning on stockpiling for at least a year .... maybe two or three.

It would be kool to have something like a bench top sized shredder. Shred all that copper into little 1/4" sized bits ... box it up and forget about it for awhile. Palletize it up all neat and tidy then ship it out of state for better prices.

~ Don't mind me ... just daydreaming. ~

---

Small smelter w/ crucible that has small holes on one side.... Pour into water and it makes BB's....... Store in 5 gallon pails with screw on tops..... Save for a rainy day. Can you tell I have been thinking about this for a while? :)

I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of my potential buyer. I think i would be okay buying copper in a form that i'm used to buying. Stuff like pipes and wire. It would probably be alright if it were shredded but i would have to grade it as # 2 just to be on the safe side. It's a problem when it's been melted though. That's a big trust. I would really have to know the gent that smelted it and then take his word that it's legit.

I have made some gain on on compressing my bare bright & brass. A 12" x 12" x 6" high cardboard box will hold 50lbs just right. I just tape them closed, mark the container weight, net weight, and what's inside the box on the outside. It seems like that kind of thing would be pretty agreeable to most any yard. They wouldn't have to put any work into it. I was thinking that i might be able to leverage a better price if i had a thousand pounds just sitting all neat and pretty on a pallet. Lol .... big dreams. I've either got to figure out how to source more material or be very patient and accumulate for my retirement over the next few years.

Alchemy is good too but i've done PM's before. The trick was to time the market just right. You buy low and sell high. I've done pretty well with it ... but honestly ... it probably had more to do with beginners luck than any skill in playing the market. I was pretty young at the time.

IDK ... it just feels like we ought to be getting more for our copper and brass. There's a fair amount of work involved in putting that stuff up.

Selling copper seems counter-intuitive right now. It's like the opposite of buy low sell high.

I have been selling cast aluminum scrap for over 40 years. Once I even sold 100 tons in a single year. In 2008 aluminum prices crashed relative to all other non-ferrous prices and aluminum prices have never recovered. Nor do I see any reason for them to recover in the for-see-able future. Therefore in most cases there really is no reason to sit on it.

For decades before 2008 I watched aluminum on the London Metal Exchange. During that time the normal amount on hand was something like 1 million tons. In 2008 it jumped to 5 million tons and stayed there for over a decade. Last time I looked it was around 3 million tons. No clue about today, but I doubt that it is any better. Bottom line is that there is SIMPLY TOO MUCH ALUMINUM AVAILABLE and has been for over a decade. No chance of that changing any time soon. And no chance of prices getting much better at all.

In the decades before 2008 I noticed a correlation between #2 steel scrap and aluminum. For over 25 years the ratio was 20:1 (if steel was $50 per ton aluminum was about 50 cents per pound). That ratio held for decades. In 2008 the ratio went to 6:1 ($250 per ton versus 75 cents per pound). Last January local steel was $125 ton and aluminum was at 35 cents per pound, a ratio of 5.6:1. No clue today since the lockdown. Regardless, with aluminum so low I am not even separating out the 50% dirty aluminum any more (and haven't been for over 4 years) - I am just throwing it in the steel scrap.

With so much aluminum available, I see no real upside to aluminum prices for DECADES. Yeah, they might go up some, but every thing else will go up faster.

I remember in the late 60’s when aluminum prices went to the moon. Municipal street lamp posts started disappearing in the wee hours.

I’ve lived long enough that I’ve tried forecasting the price of nearly everything at one time or the other. Generally I’ve been wrong. Something unexpected in the market happens.
For example. I’m the 60’s they started using alum for soda cans as I recall. Mid 70’s it was introduced in beer cans.
Now the metal is so cheap that will spark a new massive use of one kind or the other. For example, Ford’s f150 and Range Rover bodies are alum and considered superior bringing higher $. They will likely vastly expand the use. I guess the big question is, how much will China flood the market !