Copper Scrap Coefficients Climb as Bare Bright Holds $6.37/lb

Gather round, friends of the red metal! Word arrives from the Shanghai exchange that copper prices have wavered, yet the coefficients paid on scrap have climbed once more, for supply is tight and the hunters of old wire find the pickings lean. Here at home, #1 Bare Bright copper stands at about $6.37 per pound on the national average, and the broader copper market is up 1.4% on the day. A fine, fat morning for the honest scrapper!

Mark the curiosity in the Eastern report. When the headline price sags yet scrap coefficients rise, it tells us the buyers want material more than they want comfort. A coefficient is simply the share of the benchmark price a yard will pay for a given grade. When refiners and smelters cannot find enough scrap, they bid up the share to coax it from the shadows. Scarcity makes the scrapper king, and the clean bright wire in your barrow is a bit of sovereign coin.

I have seen this dance before, though in my day it was done with coppers rather than coefficients. When I stamped DR. G. G. WILKINS into better than a hundred thousand cents across New England, copper was the people's metal. It passed hand to hand through every saloon and eating-house, my own Fort Wilkins included, where a man might lose his tooth in the chair and his penny at the bar, with the bear caged politely nearby. Copper has always travelled, and it has always been hunted, melted, and born again.

And where does reborn copper go? Into the still, my friends, where I would have it go first! Every pot still and alembic, from the monastery cell to the Appalachian moonshiner's worm, owes its clean spirit to the red metal. Copper draws sulfur compounds and sour volatiles from the rising vapor, leaving whiskey, brandy and rum bright on the tongue. A stainless still cannot do this. So when scrap runs tight, spare a thought for the distiller waiting on his next fine sheet of copper.

Nor does the tale end at the tavern door. Copper runs through the wire that electrifies everything, the water lines in your walls, the motors that turn the world's wheels, and the roofs and gutters that weather to a noble green. Now it also feeds the data halls and electric carriages of this modern age, each one hungry for more of the conductor than the last. Demand has many mouths, and supply, as Shanghai reminds us, has only so many hands.

My counsel to the trade: sort your grades with care, keep your Bare Bright stripped and free of tarnish, and keep your #2 and insulated wire honestly labelled. A clean pile earns the best coefficient in any market, tight or slack. Check the board, trust the red metal, and carry on.

Yours in verdigris and valor,
— Alchemist G. G. Wilkins