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Comment by adsr | Hacker News Reader

A kg is about $7 at the moment it seems, so suppose that's 5 kg then $35.

That's it? I was under the impression that copper was far more expensive and is the reason why expresso machines are as expensive as they are.

Copper compared to many metals isn't particular expensive per KG, it is just relatively expensive in the class of metals that we use a crapload of (for example aluminimum is around $1.8 per KG) it is still much cheaper than tin at ~$22.

The main reason that copper is so valuable is it has so many uses and is very easily recycled(I saw an estimate that said 80% of all the copper ever mined is still in use) so holds it's value (You often get 90-95% of its commodity value for recycling).

This.

Copper is always in demand, has a bajillion uses, and can be scrapped and reworked very easily. This is why you hear about meth heads stripping copper wiring out of old homes. It's not that the copper is incredibly precious. It's that the copper is so easily liquefied into cash at any number of one-stop, no-questions-asked destinations.

Copper is expensive as a building or product material, not in and of itself, but in relation to many of the alternatives in any given application. Small differences in component costs, scaled over large supply chains, add up to huge differences in margin at the macro level.

Here in the UK there is constant copper theft going on. The church up the road here had their roof pinched 3 times in 6 months. But it is good that if you have new heating (with a combi boiler) and your condenser boiler taken out, that massive water tank you had in the loft to hold water now suddenly turns into money!

Copper and aluminum are two commonly used metals that are manufactured by relatively costly process that at the same time allows essentially complete recycling.

On the other hand there are not that many uses for pure copper (most of them are electricity related) as there are many other metals or copper alloys that are significantly cheaper.

A quick browse over at onlinemetals leads me to believe that you're probably off by a factor of 10x-20x.

http://www.onlinemetals.com/merchant.cfm?id=1288&step=2&top_...

That may be, but most of that markup is probably in the part it self, if you compare to a steel tube of the same dimension you'll see an indication of that. I was going by the current price the metal trades for, that is, a ballpark figure as something to "begin to imagine" what it could cost based on the material alone.

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