I noticed the topic “Statue of Liberty” was trending on Twitter and wondered why. Low and behold, it is the 125th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. My fiancé Joey asked me to look up what material the Statue of Liberty is made of and I found out it’s made of copper with a wood frame.

Joey takes scrap metal to the scrap yard in his spare time, and out of curiosity we both wanted to find out how much the Statue of Liberty would be worth in scrap metal.

First, we looked up the weight of the Statue of Liberty in copper, which is 62,000 pounds. Then we looked up the current price of copper as it fluctuates from day-to-day, which is $3.6469 per pound. To calculate the scrap metal value of the Statue of Liberty, we simply multiplied the Statue’s weight in copper by the current value of copper per pound. Here are the surprising results of our calculation:

The Statue of Liberty is only worth $226,107.80 in scrap metal. Add about $30,000 to this figure if you plan on scrapping its 250,000 pounds of steel. Compare that to the $64,000 francs, or $16,000 USD it cost in copper to construct back in 1876. Considering the historic value of The Statue of Liberty, you’d think it would be worth more, even in scrap metal, wouldn’t you?

Sources:

metalprices.com – Current price of copper

Wikipedia – Cost of copper to construct the Statue of Liberty

http://nyc-architecture.com – Weight of the Statue of Liberty in copper and steel