Copper Rebounds and the Scrapper Sells at the Top of the Tide

Well now, the red metal has done what it always does when the doubters look away — it turned on its heel and climbed. Word comes from the Shanghai Metals Market that copper rebounded from its lows while the scrap traders, clever devils, sold their piles at the highs. A rise of 2.2 percent on the day, and here at home the honest #1 Bare Bright stands near $6.23 the pound. I have counterstamped a hundred thousand cents in my time, and I tell you no metal keeps its dignity in a falling market quite like copper.

Understand the lesson buried in that headline, friends. The trader who waited and watched caught the tide at flood. That is the scrapper's whole art — knowing that copper is never truly cheap for long, because the world cannot run a single hour without it. Every rebound is copper reminding the ledgers who is king.

And why is she king? Let me speak of my favorite subject, as I always must — the still. From the shadowed alembics of the old monastery brothers to the Appalachian moonshiner nursing his worm through a cold hollow at midnight, the spirit has passed through copper for a thousand years. Not for fashion. For chemistry. The red metal reaches into the rising vapor and seizes the sulfur, the foul volatiles, the reeking compounds that would ruin a good whiskey — and it holds them fast, so what drips clean into the jar is worthy of a man's throat. A stainless kettle cannot perform that miracle; it is a bucket, not a partner. When your copper pot still climbs 2.2 percent, know that every distiller from Kentucky to Speyside feels it in the price of his craft.

But the still is only one of copper's many lives. She is the wire that carries the lightning into your parlor, the plumbing that brings sweet water to your basin, the green-weathered roof that outlives its builder, the bright bottom of the cook's best pan. In this humming modern age she feeds the electric carriages and the great data-halls that never sleep — every one of them a glutton for the conductor. Small wonder the market cannot hold her down.

So gather your Bare Bright and your #1 tubing, your brass fittings and your heavy radiators. Sort them honest and weigh them fair. When the exchange rebounds and the traders sell at highs, the man with a clean pile of copper is the man smiling. Copper is the people's metal — passed hand to hand in every saloon and eating-house, as it was in my old Fort Wilkins, bear and all.

Hold your copper, and sell it when she's proud.

— Alchemist G. G. Wilkins