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THE Precious Metals: Copper Thread (merged)

Discussions about the economic and financial ramifications of PEAK OIL

Re: Copper as currency after a crash

Unread postby pedalling_faster » Mon 18 Jan 2010, 09:28:41

dinopello wrote:You're right, anything that is easy to identify, hard to forge and easily transportable could become a new medium of exchange.


= Bullets.

i don't mean armed hold-ups, i mean, paying with bullets.

e.g. one cup of wheat for
1 .45 bullet
4 9 mm bullets
8 .22 caliber bullets

though then we're down to barter and the cup of wheat could also be the medium of exchange.
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Re: THE Precious Metals: Copper Thread (merged)

Unread postby Subjectivist » Tue 19 Jul 2016, 12:52:05

World Copper resources on land are nearing decline.

Expansive study on global copper released this past week — from a top authority in the world’s largest producing nation, Chile.

That came from the government-run Chilean Copper Commission (Cochilco). Which put together 15 years of exploration data in Chile and beyond, to look at where major copper discoveries are coming from — and how successful exploration spending in the sector has been of late.


http://www.businessinsider.com/the-worl ... per-2016-7
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Re: THE Precious Metals: Copper Thread (merged)

Unread postby Subjectivist » Tue 19 Jul 2016, 12:55:08

On the other side of the coin, deep sea mineral resources have barely been surveyed, let alone exploited.

Together with cobalt crusts, manganese nodules are considered to be the most important deposits of metals and other mineral resources in the sea today. These nodules, with a size ranging from that of a potato to a head of lettuce, contain mainly manganese, as their name suggests, but also iron, nickel, copper, titanium and cobalt. In part, the manganese nodule deposits are of interest because they contain greater amounts of some metals than are found in today’s known economically minable deposits. It is assumed that the worldwide manganese nodule occurrences contain significantly more manganese, for example, than in the reserves on land. Occurrences of economic interest are concentrated particularly in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, in the wide deep-sea basins at depths of 3500 to 6500 metres. The individual nodules lie loosely on the sea floor, but can sometimes be covered by a thin sediment layer. Theoretically they can be harvested relatively easily from the sea floor. They can be collected from the bottom with underwater vehicles similar to a potato harvester. Prototypes in the late 1970s and early 1980s have shown that this will work.


http://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-3-ov ... e-nodules/
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Re: THE Precious Metals: Copper Thread (merged)

Unread postby Subjectivist » Tue 19 Jul 2016, 20:56:18

Seriously? I know you are anti technology, but just how high tech do you think it is to drag a screen across the flood? They have been doing trials with different methods from the 1970's. Here is a higher tech version being developed by India, http://www.deepoceanmining.org/docs/atmanand.pdf

All sorts of companies and countries have done tests. All of them are waiting for the same thing, prices to rise high enough to make it profitable. Just like the shale boom that took off when oil hit $100/bbl ocean dredge mining will take off when copper gets too expensive to keep mining like we do now.
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Re: THE Precious Metals: Copper Thread (merged)

Unread postby Subjectivist » Tue 19 Jul 2016, 21:37:50

I remember learning about sea floor nodules back around 1975.
Over the decades I have heard the same statement in more or less the same words, they are too expensive to collect and process until the price of Copper or Manganese or one of the other metals they are made of hits a certain sustained price point.

When it comes to Copper specifically, the only reason it is still so popular for things like wiring is its relative low cost. You can make household wire out of aluminum, except people are scared because of the rash of poorly installed aluminum branch wiring caused house fires in the late 1970's. Heck if you are willing to use thicker wiring you can cheaply make circuits with steel or better yet iron wire.

Back during World War II because of the need for copper for war material lead the government to use silver wiring for the Manhattan project. Don't bother scavenging for it, as soon as the war ended they ripped out all the silver wiring and replaced it with standard copper :-D

We have predominantly used copper for the last century because it was convenient and cheap. Make it inconvenient and expensive and that will change. One of two things will happen, new sources will be developed making it cheaper, or substitutes will be implemented. If our civilization crashes it won't be from a shortage of electrical wiring.
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Re: THE Precious Metals: Copper Thread (merged)

Unread postby Tanada » Tue 19 Jul 2016, 23:39:15

There is the problem indeed. Copper is not the best electrical conductor, Silver is for nearly all purposes. But copper is about 100 times more abundant than silver. On the other hand Iron is about 1000 times more common than copper, and Aluminum is even more common than that. While neither is as good as Silver or Copper for wiring both work just fine if you size the wires correctly for the wattage you are planning to transmit. Heck if you want nearly anything we consider a metal will do just fine, including lead like older style auto battery terminals, again subject to following sound engineering with the size of the wire being correct for the wattage being transmitted.
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Re: THE Silver & Gold Thread (merged)

Unread postby Revi » Wed 20 Dec 2017, 12:30:26

Here's a way to play the copper bullion. A pound for around $8. That's around 50 cents an ounce. Not too bad considering that copper is going for around $3.20 a pound and it is all neatly put into a cube, so it may make sense...

Best deal is still collecting pre-82 pennies.

https://www.jmbullion.com/1-pound-copper-bullion-cube/
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Re: THE Precious Metals: Copper Thread (merged)

Unread postby Revi » Thu 21 Dec 2017, 12:52:35

I like to find early British Pennies in the coin bins at shops. They usually go for around 10 cents, and they are worth a lot more if you include their numismatic value. They contain a third of an ounce of copper, so they are worth around 7 cents just in copper.

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