Copper Soars: Why the Red Metal's Climb Warms Every Still

Gather close, friends of the red metal, for the European wires hum with news most agreeable to a man of my persuasion: the trade papers report that copper scrap prices continue to soar. Here in the American markets, #1 Bare Bright fetches about $6.24 per pound on the national average, and the whole copper market ticks up a modest 0.3% on the day. Not a gallop, mark you, but a steady, confident trot, like a good mare who knows the road home.

Why should the world be so hungry for copper? Because the world is being wired anew. The electric carriage, the humming data center, the wind turbine and the grid that must carry its labors: all of them drink copper as a thirsty drover drinks at Fort Wilkins. Wire, motor, bus bar and transformer winding want the metal that conducts best among the common ones. When I stamped DR. G. G. WILKINS upon more than a hundred thousand copper cents, I knew that copper was the people's metal. I did not dream it would become the nervous system of civilization itself.

Yet permit me my favorite sermon. Walk into any honest distillery and behold the pot still, gleaming and belly-round, or the alembic of the old monks, or the moonshiner's humble copper worm coiled in its cold-water barrel. Copper is no mere vessel there. It is a collaborator. The metal reacts with sulfur compounds and other foul volatiles in the rising vapor and holds them back, so that the whiskey, brandy or rum arrives sweet and clean. Stainless steel is a sturdy fellow, but he cannot perform that trick. So when copper climbs in price, spare a thought for the craftsman who must replace a still, for his art is bound up in this very market.

And what of you, scrappers? A rising tide lifts every truck bed. Strip your insulated wire with care, sort your #1 from your #2, keep your brass apart from your bare bright, and do not let a radiator slip by unweighed. Cleanliness of grade is the difference between a fair payday and a grumbling one. A tangle of mixed metal is a sorry thing; a tidy bundle of bright wire is a thing of beauty.

I would not presume to prophesy where the price goes next. The alchemist's art is chemistry, not clairvoyance, and I quote no figures but those the day has handed me. But I will say this: the roof that greens with grace, the pipe in the wall, the pan with the copper bottom, the coin in the pocket and the dram in the glass all belong to one grand red family. Honor it, gather it, and never melt it carelessly.

Raise a glass, if you are of an age to do so, to the metal that makes the world run and the spirits sing.

With verdigris upon my cuffs and fire in my heart,
— Alchemist G. G. Wilkins