Rich in Copper, Poor in Cash: A Scrapper's Paradox

Gather round, friends, for here is a riddle worthy of any alchemist's ledger: how can a man be drowning in the red metal and yet parched for coin? The wire from Japan brings word that scrap wholesalers across those islands are pinched for liquidity despite record copper prices — the very abundance that ought to enrich them is squeezing their purses dry.

The trick, as any scrapper who has hauled a hundredweight of radiators knows, is that a high price is a heavy price. When Bare Bright fetches $5.49 the pound — and today the market climbs another 1.1 percent, the needle still pointing skyward — a wholesaler must lay out a king's ransom to buy his stock, and wait, and wait, before the mills settle up. The metal sits in the yard glowing like treasure while the banker taps his foot. Rich in copper, poor in cash. I have seen it in my own counterstamping days, when I drove DR. G. G. WILKINS into a hundred thousand copper cents — every one worth its weight, yet a coin in the pocket is not the same as bread on the table until it is spent.

Still, do not weep for the red metal. This strain is a fever of finance, not of worth. Copper is more coveted now than in all my long years above the tooth-pulling chair at Fort Wilkins. It runs the wires that light the cities, the motors that spin, the humming data-halls and electric carriages of this restless age. It lines the roofs that weather to noble green and the water-pipes beneath our feet.

And — you knew I would come to it — it makes good liquor possible. The pot still, the alembic, the moonshiner's coiled worm: all copper, and all for a reason no banker's ledger can capture. The red metal seizes the sulfurous demons out of the rising vapor and hands you back a spirit clean and sweet. From the monastery brothers stooped over their stills to the Appalachian man tending his fire by moonlight, distillers have trusted copper for centuries, because stainless steel is a cold and lifeless thing that lets the poison pass. There is a metal that works for its keep.

So let the Japanese wholesalers ride out this squeeze. The value is real; only the timing bites. My counsel to the trade: keep your grades honest — your #1 Bare Bright bright, your #2 and your brass sorted true — and do not sell in a panic what the whole electrified, spirit-loving world is scrambling to buy. High prices are a burden only until the cash comes home.

Pour a measure from a copper still tonight, and drink to patience. — Alchemist G. G. Wilkins