There’s a few things to look at here and mls hit one of them head on. Let’s first address copper prices. If you look at iScrapapp dot com you’ll find some discussion on this issue as well. The rising numbers you see are for feed stock copper. That is clean 98.5% or better pure. And that has skyrocketed. Other 90+% copper has gone with that, such as rod and turnings, dust etc. On the other hand many of the alloy materials (like tin, silver, and pewter mixes) have all tanked. As has the plastics values making all those coatings far more expensive to remove and store.
Copper makes up very little of the overall weight in a power supply. One of the yards I’m lucky to use is a tier 1 recycler. That means they are a final source, as buyer and seller, for Scrap. They don’t sell to other recycling companies, they sell to refineries and manufacturers. And they buy by the truck and train load from other recycling yards. These companies deal in megatons annually. Here’s some various copper rates from Monday and Tuesday including the smaller markdown they often give me for having a relationship with them. Copper sheet $3.90 Copper rod $3.90 Copper #2 $2.50 Copper #3 $1.70 Dirty copper $1.00 Copper transformer 50% $0.75 Copper transformer 20/80 $0.25 Copper power supply $0.15 Copper electrical parts $0.15
The last two are where most computer power supply units fall. Add to that that power supplies are big bulky hunks that are heavy... and not a staple for boardsort the pricing makes sense. The need to intake, inventory, store...! Most of the value by weight in a power supply is dirty steel and carbon quantity from ceramics. They’re rarely broken down and are usually shredded and used as a carbon booster for making low grade steel.
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