Copper Wire Prices

Copper wire prices are based on the current cost of copper per pound on the NYSE. It’s traded daily and determines the base copper pricing for most types of wire and cables. Of course, other factors of insulation, shielding and engineering need to be factored in after the base price of copper.

Electrical wire consists of THHN, THWN, Romex, UFB, Type MC and other types of building wire. These types of wiring are effected the most by the price of copper because there’s very little beyond the amount of copper. The cost of copper makes up about 75% of the total cost of electrical wire.

Copper has been slowly lowering over the last few months to about $3.82 per pound. Don’t forget that after you mathematically figure out the cost of copper in a 6 awg wire you also need to consider the following: The manufacturer drawing the copper, creating the solid copper strands, winding the copper strands to the correct gauge size, engineering and adding the insulation over the copper strands, labeling the wire with approvals, putting the wire onto 1000′ spools, stocking it in a warehouse, selling it to distributors at a profit and the distributor selling it to the end user for another profit.

Other considerations include realizing that manufacturers have already bought the copper, started the process and sometimes already have it in their warehouse ready to go when you call looking for a lower price because copper dropped dramatically over night. One night only starts the entire process over again at a lower cost which will be trickled down the ladder slowly.

If you’re an electrician or installer than you might have buckets of scrap copper that you want to get cash for from a metal scrap yard. In that case the daily copper price is the number you want to use. You just need to remember that they have costs too and the price the give you per pound will be about 70% of the actual copper price per pound. They need to strip the insulation off and melt it down for the manufacturers to purchase it.