05/03/2026
Copper might go way way up… who knows. what I’m about to say is an example of what I’ve been saying for years: “lots of Youtubers and newsletter people and commentators give you a bunch of facts, those facts might be completely correct, but these commentators will give you conclusions that often times are not at all necessitated by the underlying facts.”
Just because you think copper is going way up doesn’t mean you should go out and buy copper bars.
If you want to speculate in the price of copper going up, One thing you want to avoid doing is buying copper 1 ounce rounds, 1 ounce bars, 10 ounce bars, 1 pound bars, kilo bars… These are NOVELTY items. Sure, if you can get a 1 pound bar for five or six bucks, great! But the market on these seems to be 15 or 20 bucks each.… 3X or 4X their melt value. Paying 3X or 4X its melt value is a terrible idea if it’s meant to be an investment in the underlying metal.
If you want barterable copper just hoard all of your pre-1982 one cent coins.
One great thing about precious metals. Is that buying standard products you can usually get them at just a small premium over their intrinsic value… we are talking about one to a few percent.
3X melt value for copper is a 200% premium. Rather than a couple percent premium on a gold bullion coin.
and please don’t tell me “it’s for the long run, and copper is going so far up so it doesn’t matter“ – yes, it does matter! I’ve heard people say this also about buying specific gold and silver products that have super high premiums. If things in the long run are just going to be worth their metal value because metals are going so high, that’s even more of a reason to not pay a premium upfront! And also, paying too much upfront, simply means that in the long run, you will lose more or you will make less than you otherwise would had you stuck with low premium low spread things.
If you buy a copper futures contract or maybe some ETF that tracks the price of copper and the price of copper doubles your position will be worth approximately double.
But if you buy a 1 pound copper bar at 3X it’s melt value, and copper doubles, you are still probably not going to be up... you are still probably losing money. Hard to say how liquid a Market on what is currently a high spread novelty Will be in the future... so maybe you will be able to sell your copper bar at some massive premium, somewhat commensurate to what you paid upfront, but you should definitely not rely on that And in my opinion that is a very unlikely scenario.
