Time To Raid The Whisky Bottle
Posted by Paul Woodhouse at May 11th, 2006
The Guardian has one of those terribly interesting (well I think so) slightly off-the-rail economic indicator articles for dummies. It mentions quite a few different things, but this bit caught my eye in particular:
Yesterday the price of copper hit an all-time record of $8,000 a tonne, driven by frantic buying and selling by commodity brokers and futures traders. But a little-noticed fact is that every 2p piece made before 1992 is 97% copper - meaning that each coin contains 6.9g of the metal. Collect together 145 of them, and you’ve got a kilo’s worth of copper. Now, just find another 999kg, a total of 145,000 coins, and you’ve got a tonne.
On their face value, those coins are worth just £2,900. But taking them to a scrap merchant and selling them on the open market for their metal content will make you a cool £1,500 profit, especially if you throw in the 25kg of zinc that are also sitting in your goldmine of loose change.
Now this got me thinking about all those 4.5 ltr Bell’s bottles of whisky and how many full ones you’d need to get yourself a tonne of two pence pieces.
The Royal Mint has the following info regarding the coin:
Dia 25.9mm
Weight 7.12grms
Thickness 1.85mm - bronze
2.03mm - copper-plated steel
I’ve scoured the internet for answers as to how many 2ps you can fit in a 4.5 ltr whisky bottle but all to no avail. I’ve also spent the last hour trying to convert crap into other crap - also to no avail. It appears that my maths o-level isn’t really of any use; although, I have converted fishcakes into hectares.
So the question is: How do you work it out?
(Please ;-))
Simplistically isnt it a volume jobby. say with 13mm radius it is 1.3 X 1.3 X 3.142 X .185 =0.98cc (OK make it 1cc) your bottle is 4500ccs so very max is 4500 so I would say probably a couple of thousand.
Alternatively why not just weigh the bottle with coins and knock a bit off for the glass?
Just thought how did you ever drink 4.5litres of whisky!
You lovely boy.
That means if a ton of 2p coins equates to 145,000 of the beggars you’d need 72.5 4.5 ltr whisky bottles.
Now that would be a liver-crippler.
However, it’s all terribly moot since the price of copper plunged again on Monday.
Sorry for wasting everybody’s time.