Why Buy Copper?

Every few weeks I get an email quoting the spot price of copper and mentioning the 'high price' of the copper bars sold on the Buy Copper website.  

Some people ask for an explanation of the price and some people are rude.  The rude emails are deleted straight away, and I rarely have time now to reply to the people who'd like to know.  

The reason is, tax and labour.  

When you buy copper or silver or titanium, palladium, gallium etc you have to pay tax.  VAT is 20%.  Polishing is labour +VAT, stamping is stamping +VAT 

Paypal takes 3%  and there are other expenses that push the price higher.  

The spot price is a mythical number constantly quoted.  I believe you can buy metals at the spot price from the London Metals Exchange but it would have to be about 20 tonnes! Which you'd have to move with a lorry and the pay 20% VAT. What form it would look like I don't know because nobody does it.  

Remember the price of gold was at an all time low in about 2002?  How many people considered Gold as a good investment back then?  How many uses has gold got?  Not many.  What about Copper?

So as the Euro slides into oblivion much like the Russian Ruble did in the 90s, the currency you think in may actaully be worthless.  

Certainly £75 billion of new Quantatative Easing money from the Bank of England last week hasn't done your savings or weekly wage any good. 

Metals are money, they have value because they are expensive to mine.  Paper money is a promise.  The Bank of England has devalued it's promise of worth.

£75billion pounds is about 10% of GDP in Britain and they'll use that up in under 2 years, which probably means the price of everything in paper Pounds will go up by about 10% before the next round of devaluing.  

http://buycopper.co.uk/

20 Tin bullion bars in stock and lots of silver coins

19 One kilo Tin bullion bars now in stock

http://buycopper.co.uk/one%20kilo%20tin%20bar.html

I took advantage of the stock market crash today and bought in a load of new stock silver bullion coins.  I wish I took advantage of the crash a little later as I would've saved some money, but that's metal prices for you. 

    Top of the list is the Britannia one ounce fine silver coin.  These seem to be more expensive than other silver bullion coins.  I was put off them for years because they weren't 999 purity but realised they do have One troy ounce of fine silver in, it's just alloyed with another metal so is actually heavier than 1 troy ounce.  I suspect the other metal is to make it the coin more durable as pure silver is very soft.
This years design in quite nice.  I wasn't too keen on last years to be honest.

Here's the 1999 Kookaburra 1 Ounce silver coin.  I got a load of these in because this particular year looks really nice.  I have one laying around somewhere.  Can't remember the year but it had the rays of the sun streaming out.  That was my favourite coin for a while.  I think it was a 2006. Not sure.

There are two of these 2012 Year of the Dragon coins made in the Perth Mint. They're a whopping 10 ounces, so there's a lot of coin for your money.

If you like the Australian Koala series the 2011 coin is quite nice.
















                             2011  One ounce silver Libertad
These coins are really good. Quite different from other coins.  I had a load of 1/2 Oz silver Libertads in last month and they sold out very quickly.  I can't seem to find any more of the 1/2 Oz version which is a shame.    

The above coins will be listed soon.  

http://buycopper.co.uk

Restruck copper bars!

Not satisfied with the stamping of the 85 copper bars I took them to a another pressings workshop.
They do prototype pressings for Aston Martin, McLaren, Jaguar and many other top British brands.
It was amazing to be honest.  The chap put the copper bars on an enormous press and pressed each bar with 100tonnes.  He took care restamping and not one bar was double stamped, which was something I was quite worried about.
It instantly cured the problem of the missing 'O' from the word Kilo and the missing 'R' from the word copper.
The bars are all as bright as a button and I've placed them in a zip lock bag to keep the oxygen out.

America
There seems to be a lot of interest from America and I've not sold to America before so I phoned FedEx to see how much it would cost to send to Texas as an example.  The price I was quoted was
£118 for 10kilos which is quite expensive per kilo
£286 for 50 kilos which works out quite cheap at £5.72/ kilo
So if there are any American traders out there interested in wholesale amounts of these copper bullion bars, send me an email from http://buycopper.co.uk/ and I'll get the best possible price.

I'll see about having the British VAT removed from bars for exporting to America.  Tax is a bit of a minefield on this side of the pond.
Here are some photo's I took of one of the new copper bars.  I put it on the window sill in the light because using a camera flash with reflective metals tends to make it look very dark.  

One Kilo bar of polish copper bullion

You can see the reflection of the camera and the trees in the garden in this photo.  

A one penny piece added to the photo to indicate a rough sizing of the bar.

I hope you like the look of the bars.  I'm very pleased.  

Rich 

http://buycopper.co.uk/

Rare Earth buyer supplier

After some feedback about the metal Gallium it seems people are interested but not sure where you would be able to sell the metal once you own it. 

So I phoned around a couple of metal specialists and I’ve found a foundry near Liverpool UK that deals in rare earths and specialist metals. 

They’ll be able to buy and supply Rare Earth and just plain rare metals.  Of course, they’ll be talking minimum orders of several kilo’s upwards, so I’ll look into a section of the shop where I can buy the small quantities of unusual metals people may hold as an investment. It'll probably as a 2% less than scrap price much like how silver is bought back by bullion traders.

I also found out Gallium isn’t part of the Rare Earth group of metals.  Gallium is plain and simply rare, as in, there is hardly any of the metal on the face of the planet or universe. 

The boss of the foundry told me more about what he’s noticed in the Rare Earth metal market.  He says, these metals have shot up in price and are now difficult to get hold of because of China’s restriction on export supply.  So I’ve heard it now, straight from the horses mouth. 

A little reminder.  Russia restricted the export of Palladium in 2000 and the price increased ten fold! 

I’ll see if I can buy metals like Indium, Tantalum and Hafnium from the foundry because that would save on import duty and shipping and of course bring you the customer the cheapest possible price. 

Copper Bars

The 1kilo copper bars are selling well and I'll have to get some more manufactured soon.  I'll look into production of 2 kilo and 1/2kilo bars as well.  

http://buycopper.co.uk/

1 kilo bottle of pure Gallium

1 KILO OF PURE GALLIUM

Well here is what I've been banging on about for so long.
One of the rarest metals known to mankind.  Doesn't look like much does it?  : )
1 kilo bottle of pure Gallium

I got it straight from China and it cost a fortune just in postage and bank charges. It came in a huge bundle of bubble wrap, presumably to prevent it getting to 29*C and melting.
The bit I find strange about the whole thing with Gallium is, the modern world cannot get by without this metal, and yet, it is much cheaper than gold even though it must be 100 times rarer than gold.  I read one of the ways they collect it is by scraping the soot from flues on coal fired power stations.  Millions of tonnes of burnt coal only produces 30tonnes of Gallium worldwide.
Like Silver this metal is vital for modern electronics.  Gallium Arsenide is used for LED's and pure Gallium for wetting circuits.

I think I'll advertise it as 1 kilo of pure Gallium at first and if there are no takers I'll melt it into moulds, like chocolate bars. That way it suits all budgets.
I won't be able to accept paypal for this because Paypal charges are too high for such an item.  Instead, email me and I'll give my account details and you can pay into that.  Then I'll post it.
If anyone would like more of this I can try and buy a few kilos more. There are no guarantees on getting it though. They've banned selling it to the Japanese, they could easily do it to the Brits.
As an investment I think Gallium is a perfect investment metal.  Any upset in the supply can cause the price to go through the roof.
Palladium is 15 times rarer than gold and is cheaper than gold but in 2000 its price went up ten fold because the Russians didn't want to sell any that year.
The metal is quite safe to hold but I think it holds it value if it hasn't been melted and held in the palm of your hand, picking up skin cells and sweat.  : )
You wouldn't put your hands all over a Silver bullion round would you?

1 Kilo Copper Bars
The copper bars are ready!
They're polished to perfection and have just been stamped today.  They look amazing and hopefully I'll put them for sale tonight on the shop http://buycopper.co.uk/
I'll package them in cling film so they keep the oxygen out which dulls the shine, but you also get to see the bar beneath the cling film.

Cheers
http://buycopper.co.uk/