August 20, 2007
Local Copper Theft On the Increase
We read a couple months ago about copper thieves breaking into local Habitat houses to steal copper: homes built by volunteers and new homebuyers damaged and defaced by people in for a quick buck. Austin Habitat for Humanity's houses are far from the only ones being targeted by copper thieves, but the non-profit being hit is a sign of how desperate the copper theft situation is getting.
Today it was reported that the number of AC unit thefts is on the rise this year (75 more this year than from the same period of time last year). Thieves are stealing, or tearing apart, central air-conditioning units from homes to trade in the copper encased in the units for cash. Even window units aren't safe; they could hold about $75 worth of copper.
An outdoor AC unit could contain over $200 worth of copper (yes, the same unit that you or your landlord paid much more than $200 for). Because construction sites are becoming more guarded now after large amounts of copper theft, the number of AC thefts from homes may unfortunately keep growing, at least until the pay for scrap copper decreases.
Photo by geekmojo on flickr
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It is doubtful that scrap copper is going to devalue any time soon.
Every developing nation needs copper to run electricity to villages and there isn't enough to go around. And, some small nations named China and India seem to want to keep building more and more houses, etc.
There's a reason why the federal government made it illegal to ship pennies out of the country in bulk recently.
Point: Invest in copper, not gold.
Yeah, but I have coil thingy that came out of my washing machine, its a large one with a couple of hundred feet of copper wiring in it. I put it out with my recycling and they wouldn't take it for free. Go figure.
That's because your recycling is for paper/glass/aluminum/plastic -- not copper.
A normal city recycling facility isn't going to be able to do anything with a large copper coil; it'll just be tossed along with the other stuff that's non-recyclable (rubber bands, wrong types of plastics, etc).
Guest #1, Pennies are made almost entirely of zinc. Zinc is also booming though.
#4, true but from 1962 through 1982, the penny was 95% copper, 5% zinc.
From 1982 through present day, the penny was 2.5% copper, 97.5% zinc.
I didn't know those exact percentages/dates, but Google was glad to help out. Zinc is doing pretty well too, so the law still makes sense.
Also, here's a link to an article about the law.
Article here
If there are any meth addicts reading this right now, I'd like to tell you to get a life...and I hope the giant spiders eat your brains.