Austinist: Local Copper Theft On the Increase

guest

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 17:45:00 -0600

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.

guest

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 13:49:33 -0600

#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

guest

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 13:42:55 -0600

Guest #1, Pennies are made almost entirely of zinc. Zinc is also booming though.

guest

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 12:21:00 -0600

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).

triman

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 12:03:51 -0600

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.

guest

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 10:55:42 -0600

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.