Prices & Thieves

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I live in a small town where meth was huge for a while about a yr and a half ago i had 4 houses stolen from in a month one house i went back 3 times and rewired it before they finally sat a patrol car out there all night and caught the idiot the 4th time he got a 1000 dollar fine and community service lol. 2 of them were just one time the other was a nightmare they broke in the house after everything was done and busted the sheetrock pulled the wire out and instead of stealing the lights they just destroyed them was about 14 thousand in damage oh yeah there was the guy they caught stealing appliances from new houses he had 3 storage buildings full trying to resale them
 
Here in my city there used to be "Big Trash Day" - when you could take out any old crap you don't have time for a garage sale for. IT WAS FANTASTIC! And a much missed SF tradition of wondering around the neighborhood and collecting neat stuff, and often - depending on the neighborhood - have to compete with pro estate re-sellers out there for that occassional high dollar freebee. What-ever was left went in the dump - but I say 60% of it got picked up by your neighbors

e.g. My wife and I were out for coffee, and came across a nice peices of 40's arts and crafts that sold in consignment for $800. (<10%) The very next year scored a dresser that we use as a side-board - early 60's contemporary but very nice solid woodwork, full book-matched, blind dove-tails in blond maple - (I told the wife 'you sit here on this while I go get the van') still has the "free to good home" sign in one of the drawers.

Now the dump has stopped offering that big trash day - and you need to pay them to come, or pay "Got Junk" to come get it - who, it anything have any value that you did not realize will re-sell for additonal profit. And a tradition/street party/junk fair/trash gold mine is now gone....

As for copper - glad the prices are down. It's about time.... Much of that was due to a panic caused by some loud mouth in the goverment at a congressional hearing saying 50% of the worlds copper was tapped out, this coinciding with a strike at a mine in Chile - shot copper through the roof - I feel needlessly. That would be like our president saying, 'You everything to fear and loose - run on down to the bank and get your money out NOW! (Chuckle - chuckle)', as opposed to "there is nothing to fear, but fear itself"

As for wire theft - I have not lost any during any part of the last decade - other than my scraps getting cleared off the floor faster.
 
We had an odd occurance, evening crew's of others trades have been on the job.

Two outdoor air handlers were in basement, with complete indoor HVAC / Gas furnace, with

HVAC trunks all sitting disconnected and dead.

They stole the coils inside the air handles, lefts the disconnects and their
line and load wiring, over 50' each, all #8.
:grin:
 
Copper theft is way down for us . It was REALLY bad for a time . We had several substations stripped of all copper grounds . The company invested mega-bucks in a cut proof fence around our yard to replace the old chain link
that couldn't keep the crack monsters out . The off duty City Police Officers working security helped too . Yes , it's a bad neigborhood . :cool:
 
Enough on copper - I'm glad gas is down.... One night my alarm went off expecting to find broken glass - instead I found the filler cap off - I don't think they got any, if not much. This was back when it was $5. But got me a new locking one the next day.
 
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