Copper $10,000 per ton

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A few years ago the metal's price was just a small fraction of that. Pretty clearly we are getting to the bottom of the barrel of exploitable reserves of this, and many other commodities. You may need to put an armed guard on your old copper hot water system at this rate !

[+DieChecker]

I don't think we are running out. I think it is just very hard to get pit mining permits on the scale needed to cheaply extract copper ore. So it is tons cheaper to buy from overseas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper

Some countries, such as Chile and the United States, still have sizeable reserves of unmined metal which are extracted through large open pit mines.

According to The Wiki article copper prices have been popping up near 9000 dollars per ton for the last 5 to 6 years. 10,000 is not an astronomical price. Gold has doubled in price in the same time.

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The huge increase as shown on your graph in the last 8 years strongly points to demand exceeding supply, particularly considering that the lead times to increase production to take advantage of the higher price have been there, but still the price is rising.