The sustained rise in prices of major metals has sparked an investment frenzy. Following record highs in gold and silver prices, copper, with its strong upward momentum and lower price per gram, has also become a hot investment product. The emergence of "999.9 Pure Copper" investment bars on the market has sparked widespread discussion. Compared to the well-known gold and silver, does copper possess investment value? Are copper bars a speculative concept or a qualified investment product?
After gold and silver, are copper bars becoming an investment product? Recently, on various e-commerce platforms, 1000-gram copper bars labeled as "Wealth Copper Bars" or "Investment Copper Bars" have gradually entered public view, with many investors even regarding them as a new investment tool. On some platforms, such products have already garnered over 200 payments, with some products attracting over 6,000 views.
Multiple merchants in Shenzhen's Shuibei market stated that the number of customers inquiring about copper bars has increased noticeably recently. "Many customers feel the copper price might replicate silver's trend," one merchant admitted, noting that while investment copper bars are still in a market testing phase, investor interest has clearly heated up based on inquiry volume.
"Customers inquiring about copper bars expect small investments to yield large returns," said Li Yi, a salesperson at Shuibei merchant Jinxi Jewelry. Although investment copper bars have only been available for a short time, recent daily shipments have approached 1 ton.
A price list provided by the merchant shows a single 1-kilogram bar made of T2 red copper with 99.9% purity priced at 200 yuan. Purchasing 10 or more bars reduces the unit price to 170 yuan. Jiang Chaofeng, General Manager of the processing factory Genfeng Jin Craft Cultural Creative Company, explained that their factory's wholesale price is 125 yuan per kilogram, with a minimum order of 300 pieces. This implies a retail price approximately 60% higher per gram than the wholesale price.
A staff member at Shanghai Rongtong Jin Recycling mentioned that recently, when customers come to recycle gold and silver bars, they often ask if the store has channels for buying and selling copper bars.
Behind the "Investment Copper Bar" craze: Rapidly rising copper prices Industry insiders believe the popularity of "investment copper bars" results from a combination of factors. Like precious metals such as gold and silver, the rapid rise in copper prices provides a realistic foundation for its narrative as an investment product.
Data shows that international copper prices experienced a rapid upward trend in 2025, driving domestic copper prices to increase over 30% for the full year. Entering 2026, the market's gains continued to expand, with copper futures prices on the Shanghai Futures Exchange once breaking through the 100,000 yuan per ton mark.
It is worth noting that with increasing penetration of new energy vehicles, expanding scale of photovoltaic and wind power installations, and rapidly growing demand from AI data centers and grid upgrades, copper, as a key basic material, sees its long-term demand logic continuously reinforced by the market. Market institutions believe that copper's "structural scarcity" within the global energy transition and digital economy processes provides support for its price increases.
As gold prices remain high and silver prices have surged significantly, the investment threshold for gold and silver has risen substantially, leading many investors to search for the "next gold or silver." "Compared to gold costing over a thousand yuan per gram, copper bars priced around two hundred yuan are more easily packaged as a 'low-threshold,' 'high cost-performance' option," pointed out Cheng Wei, a gold market investment expert.
Furthermore, many merchants engage in conceptual packaging to endow copper with investment appeal similar to gold and silver. Some sellers promoting copper bars market them as "high-elasticity investment products" and frequently compare them to gold and silver. One merchant calculated: With an 18,000 yuan investment, one could only obtain over ten grams of gold or less than one kilogram of silver, whereas "the same amount of money can buy 90,000 grams of copper, and the returns after a copper price rise could be substantial."
"Easy to buy, hard to sell": Risks in copper bar investment require caution Interviewed experts believe risks lurk behind the perceived potential of copper bar investments. In the view of Gu Fengda, Chief Analyst at Guosen Futures, the current "copper bar fever" in the market is not based on a mature investment system but is more of a conceptual speculation leveraging the narrative of rising commodity prices.
Compared to investments in precious metals like gold, the repurchase and circulation system for copper bars is underdeveloped. Unlike gold and silver bars, investment copper bars currently lack unified quality certification standards and have not formed a mature repurchase pricing mechanism. Most merchants also frankly state that the number of shops currently willing to repurchase copper bars in the market is limited, and repurchase prices and standards are not transparent. Once market sentiment shifts, investors might face the risk of "easy to buy, hard to sell."
Simultaneously, copper as a metal is highly controversial as an investment product. Gu Fengda stated that copper's price discovery primarily relies on futures markets and bulk trade systems, differing significantly from the dual attributes—financial and commodity—of gold and silver. Participating in copper price fluctuations through copper bar investments essentially involves "financializing" an industrial product but lacks the corresponding market safeguards for an investment vehicle.
Additionally, trading industrial metals involves multiple compliance requirements related to taxation, storage, circulation, and import/export. "Investment copper bars have not yet established a corresponding compliance system. Once they move towards large-scale adoption, the risks of illegal operations and tax compliance will significantly increase," said Cheng Wei.
Yu Luyan, a non-ferrous metals analyst at CITIC Securities Futures, pointed out that as copper prices rise, various forms of participating in the copper investment market are not uncommon. These include directly engaging in the high-risk copper futures and options markets, or indirectly participating through means like non-ferrous metals ETFs or stocks of leading copper mining listed companies. Investors should choose more standardized and transparent investment channels based on their own risk tolerance.
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