Sad state of affairs

[sepefrio]

I got a call this morning canceling an inspection I had scheduled for Tuesday morning. Apparently someone went into the crawl space and cut out all the copper piping and stole it.

I've seen reports of people stealing copper from telephone and power lines and stuff like that but from someones house?

At least my neighbor (a plumber) got work out of it.

This really is a sad world we live in sometimes.

[Phillip]

In my area the plumbing has gone to being Plex and CPVC because of folks walking off with the copper.

[Bain]

This kind of thing happens in my area, as well. Hardly seems worth the time and trouble to cut the pipes. Someone ravaged a bunch of A/C condensers behind a bank's headquarters, and replacement was something like 20K.

Does anyone know how much scrap copper is worth by the pound, ton, etc.?

[kurt]

In the city, it's downspouts, gutters, AC coils, plumbing, etc. Anything copper. To some degree, it's like the "copper rush" in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where folks ran up there thinking it was like gold. Folks hear "copper's valuable", they go to all the risk and trouble, get to the wholesaler, and find out they earned $4.

So they pool their money and buy cigarettes. Usually menthol.

The new thing being "mined" is catalytic converters off cars to get the platinum and other rarified metals.

[David C. Argabright]

I heard a few weeks ago that one in every four vacant homes in this area have been vandilized. Most are in the inner city but others are being hit too. Some of the homes I'm called to inspect have had the piping removed the night before so I get to make a suprise call to the Reelters.

I have one for sale that was robbed of the copper a month ago. All told they couldn't have recived more than $100.00 for the stolen material.

He**...If they had talked to me I would have given them something to do and paid them more that the $100.00 they got from theifery. (Protection money?)

[Richard Moore]

Last I saw, copper was hovering just under $4 a pound. But that's the commodity price, presumably for pure copper. I can't imagine the crack-heads are getting more than a $1 when they drag the stuff into their favorite scrap dealer. Talking of those dealers, and not esxcusing the actual thieves, it's those unethical bastards that need to be taken out. If they weren't so eager to "assume" the crazy-eyed guy with an armload of second-hand wire and piping was a legitimite customer, we wouldn't be having this problem. I see some counties/cities are trying to crack down on the dealers and at least requiring ID from people bringing in the stuff but, of course, the scrap merchants are crying foul.

I also saw somewhere that 80+% of all scrap copper gets shipped in containers to China. Even though their explosive growth is largely the reason for the huge increase in copper prices and the associated theft, it's hard to actually "blame" the country, but it does somehow add insult to injury to be shipping the stolen stuff to them.

My answer, as always, is to start shooting more of society's assh***s, starting with car pool lane violaters and definitley including the metal thieves, but that's just me and my pet peeves.

[Les]

Couple months ago I cleaned out the barn and workshop. I went half and half with a guy to help me load a small trailer with the various metal stuff and take it to a scrap dealer. There was a sign on the scale that posted the various scrap price of metals. He took a few minutes and sorted the stuff. We got approx $600. The trailer was about 3'x7'x14" and the stuff was just thrown in. Not bad for me and not bad for him!