what are copper prices where you live , how much have they gone up in the last 12 months?
i will go first
manitoba canada , 350mcm 4 conductor = $202.00/ metre or $61.00 per foot , about a 50% increase
I am not really in the trade (moldy old inspector) but I see the prices at the Home Depot type places and it makes me wonder how you guys survive. $160 for a 250' roll of 12/2 NMC. Yikes
The service change I just did cost me $150 for the wire alone. Setting a 60-A panel about twenty feet away used $130 worth of wire. Twenty five feet of #4 for the ground ( prepackaged; I used about half) cost $50.
Prices for new wire hasn't dropped, but scrap prices are half of what they were.
I am not sure about what is happening everywhere but hurricane Ian has crushed scrap metal prices here. The scrap yards have more than they can sell or store. It is a time where aluminum, steel and copper is just sitting on the curb until the claw trucks haul it away to a dump site. I assume enterprising scrappers with a big empty lot could hit the dump sites and bank all that metal until the price recovers.
New wire is still at a premium tho since demand is high and we ain't seen nothing yet as a lot of the insurance settlements are still in the pipe. Once all this shakes out there will be a huge building boom in the path of that storm. I was surprised that I got carpet right away but I guess most of the folks haven't got that far along yet. Drywall is at a premium tho. I didn't screw around and started my recovery as soon as the sun came out.