500k+bid on close, and "Coppers and Robbers"PS: Over one-half million shares being bid at end of day, which is 5:1 ratio, so there are plenty of buyers willing to take cheap shares. Last Market by Price Update: 25 Apr 2007 15:50 ET Instrument Name: Action Minerals Inc. Symbol: ATM BID Orders Volume Price Range 11 507,000 0.110-0.145 ASK Price Range Volume Orders 0.155-0.175 115,500 10 Check out the copper article in a publication called Weekly Dig. These guys have an amusing writing style and truly put a lot of work into the piece. *****
bullboards/wraplink.asp?url=www.weeklydig.com/news_opinions/articles/coppers_and_robbers/''> https://www.weeklydig.com/news_opinions/articles/coppers_and_robbers/ Coppers and Robbers Urban prospectors strike the mother lode—in your basement by Chris Faraone Issue 9.17 Wed, April 25, 2007 Just in time for this year’s post-Easter nor’easter, thieves celebrated Good Friday by liberating copper downspouts from an Arlington church. Last month, a team of National Grid subcontractors was indefinitely suspended on suspicion that they smuggled copper wire from a Quincy job site. And, perhaps most famously, in late March, two burglars were electrocuted during a botched attempt to steal copper from a live transformer in Tyngsborough. Massachusetts residents aren’t standing on a gold mine, but with the price of copper nearly quintupling over the past three years—it’s now well north of 3 bucks per pound—any Bay State degenerate with wire cutters, brass stones and a lookout can make a lucrative dishonest living. Unlike the drug trade, in which black-market goods are ultimately consumed, the metal trade has infinite resale opportunities. By the time a chunk of copper that was mined in Connecticut three decades ago reaches a Jamaica Plain junkyard, it could have already been refined in New York, used in some Manhattanite’s bourgeois bathroom, stolen, melted down, hammered into an obnoxious pseudo-retro sundial and pried from your mother’s front lawn. Here in Massachusetts, copper is easier to find than a Dunkie’s Box o’ Joe. Our heavy-metal history dates to the mid-19th century, when the US brass industry thrived in Connecticut’s Naugatuck Valley. Traces of New England’s brass and bronze era can be found on Greater Boston’s doorknobs, drain pipes, roofs, downspouts, gutters, plaques and statues. Not for long, though. Since the price of copper triumphantly rebounded from its 60-year market low in 1999, authorities have encountered a hysterical number of obscure larcenies that have rendered copper the bald eagle of utilitarian metals. In December 2003, Massachusetts Inspector General Gregory Sullivan determined that the assistant chief engineer at Medfield State Hospital “removed almost 1,300 pounds of copper, brass and copper wire belonging to the Commonwealth from the hospital power plant.” Sullivan’s report also found that “these materials were subsequently sold on two separate occasions by the Assistant Chief Engineer at a scrapyard located in the vicinity of the plant.” Don’t exclude Ivy Leaguers from the copper swap. Last October, 180 feet of copper tubing was stolen from the Gordon McKay lab at Harvard; one month later, two copper wire bundles were reported missing from the engineering sciences building. This March, two Springfield men were caught ripping copper pipes from the bathroom walls of an abandoned house. Around the same time, a Pawtucket man who made his living spelunking for pipes in vacant buildings was caught green-handed. Early this month, crooks stole a smorgasbord of vintage copper brewing equipment (including a 12-foot-long, 400-pound copper exhaust pipe) from the Wachusett Brewing Company in Westminster. Company president Edward C. LaFortune III estimated that the goods, which will cost more than $20,000 to replace, were probably worth about $2,000 on the scrap block. While it hasn’t reached OxyContin proportions, the Commonwealth’s reputation for harboring metal thieves is well-established—so much so that when NPR’s Morning Edition investigated the national copper quagmire last September, reporter Chris Arnold drew his color from the Greater Boston region. Among the local casualties identified by NPR: a basement full of copper piping under a newly renovated Roxbury condo complex, a 600-pound bronze statue of a reading child outside a Melrose school, and a slew of battle shrines that disappeared from the North Shore last year. Eager to assign blame, Melrose Police Det. Sgt. Barry Campbell pointed middle fingers at the region’s junkyard dogs. But Ron Nunes of James G. Grant Co. in Hyde Park says that’s unfair. “A war memorial plaque would be a huge red flag—that’s definitely not an item we would take,” Nunes says. “We don’t get too many random peddlers, just mostly contractors who come in on a regular basis. Still, we throw a red flag if someone comes in with a lot of high-end stuff, like 700 pounds of new aluminum for example.” Operations like Grant police themselves, even though they don’t have to. The Crimes Against Property section of the Massachusetts General Laws states that junkers have to maintain books documenting sellers’ names and addresses, but the law doesn’t specify any identification measures. Still, Nunes takes extra precaution: While most scrapyards pay cash for booty worth less than $1,000, Grant issues checks for all transactions over $20. “It helps because there’s no real way that we can track where something really comes from,” he says. “We’re also in contact with a lot of people, so if something goes missing, they’ll usually call and tell us to keep our eyes open.” According to Copper Development Association (CDA) spokesman Ken Geremia, it’s in a recycler’s best interest to avoid sketchy dealings. It would be embarrassing for any junker to have a missing monument traced to his business, and when you run a scrapyard, reputation is everything. While Geremia’s Manhattan-based organization deals with all matters copper, much of his time is spent coping with an explosive secondary market that he calls a “worldwide epidemic.” “We’re constantly looking to see what’s going on, and the CDA recently released a list of steps that contractors can take to safeguard their inventories,” Geremia says. “As for the scrapyards, they’re victimized as much as everyone else, and we’re seeing more and more dealers take measures on their own volition. It’s a little bit more effort, but these incidents rise and fall based on supply and demand and the value of the commodity, and right now demand is obsessive.” Last week, the price of copper jumped to roughly $3.62 per pound on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That marked the commodity’s highest value since last May, when it reached an all-time high of $3.64 per pound. Even worse: Excessive demand from China is expected to keep copper futures climbing. No habla Wall Street? Basically, if you need a gas stove re-piped, expect to pay prices four times that of what you would have paid three years ago. While copper didn’t replace gold chains and Toyotas as America’s stickiest commodity overnight, recent value increases and heightened media attention have begun stirring a governmental response. Geremia sees a national trend of state and local lawmakers drafting legislation to regulate scrapyards, which are potential portals between criminals and industry. Here in Massachusetts, one place where thieves shouldn’t attempt to unload hot copper is Haverhill, where the city council recently enacted strict measures to curb metal jacking. Among the regulations: Dealers are required to provide authorities with weekly purchase lists; junkyards must install surveillance cameras; photocopies must be taken of all sellers’ identification; and business hours are limited from sunrise to 9pm. Haverhill Police Sgt. Dana Burrill told Lawrence’s Eagle-Tribune, “There will be a lot of cities and towns looking to Haverhill to see how we are curbing the thefts of metals.” Or not. So far, neither Boston nor the Commonwealth have followed Haverhill’s example. Forget hunting down the ninja-like international smugglers that Geremia and others say might be purchasing and exporting stolen artifacts from around Boston—lawmakers haven’t even taken steps to regulate local junkers. While do-good scrapyards such as Grant have homegrown systems in place to avoid blatantly questionable transactions (Nunes says he would support sanctions but sees no need for them), the current free-for-all market makes it easy to hock contracting supplies like copper wire. On job sites, it’s said to be routine for workers, foremen and supervisors to snag remnants as soon as coasts clear. At a National Grid construction zone in Quincy, an entire team of electricians was recently investigated after dumpsterloads of copper wire disappeared on several occasions. Though Quincy police cleared the suspected union workers earlier this month, they remain on suspension while National Grid grapples with copper theft, which also hit the utility behemoth to the tune of more than $100,000 in upstate New York this March. Asked about the situation, a company spokeswoman deflected: “Our workers are instructed to bring back any excess wire to a secure area on the company property,” she wrote via email. “From there it could be reused for another job or recycled if it is not suitable for re-use.” While wire grabs aren’t as amusing as, say, someone lifting forefather statues from the Freedom Trail, disappearing copper wire accounts for a large percentage of all metal thefts. On the day that the Dig contacted Boston Police Headquarters for a tally of copper thefts over the past year (they couldn’t produce one), the media relations officer pointed out that someone had been busted that morning snatching wire from a Malden Street water pump station. According to BPD records, “The suspect was apprehended after a brief foot pursuit, and was found wearing latex medical gloves [and in possession of] a knife [that was] apparently used to cut the copper wire.” When asked about his accessories, the man “told officers that he was wearing gloves because he had to go to the bathroom.” Bad liar or not, chances are the Malden Street bandit could have easily unloaded his stash to any local junkyard. According to one veteran Boston contractor (who spoke anonymously in fear of never being able to pitch hot metal again), there’s a lot less discretion when building supplies are up for grabs than when someone plops an 8-foot copper crucifix on the scale. “Any junkyard would take any leftover wire—it doesn’t matter if a crackhead brings it in,” he says. “It all ends up in the same place, so they don’t give a [censored] where it comes from. That [censored] like cash these days.” » Read more "news + opinions" from our archive