In this morning Newspaper...
{The quest for copper to a new low}... 
http://timestranscript.canadaeast.co.../article/54882
Thieves steal copper vases from graves
Valuable metal latest target of thieves looking to sell to scrap dealers
Published Friday August 24th, 2007
Appeared on page C12
HALIFAX (CP) - Bill Philpitt was perplexed when he knelt to place flowers on his wife's grave on what would have been the couple's 42nd wedding anniversary and found the bronze vase that adorned her headstone was missing.
The retired truck driver looked around and noticed that several of the other vases that held bouquets at other graves were also gone, leaving open holes in the name plates of the deceased.
Philpitt soon learned that he had become the latest victim of a phenomenon that has taken the quest for copper to a new low -- thieves pilfering the valuable metal from gravesites and selling it for scrap.
"You don't know what to think -- I mean, who would do this?" Philpitt, 66, said yesterday from his home at a trailer park in nearby Beaver Bank, just days after the incident. "It sort of upsets you."
Managers of cemeteries throughout the city have been hit by the same problem in recent weeks as dozens of the vases have been pinched by robbers who cash in on the reddish metal, which has risen to about $3 a pound from a low of about 70 cents.
Bill Mont, manager and owner of the Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Lower Sackville where Philpitt's wife Anna is buried, said the vases began disappearing about five months ago.
He installed a flood light and a full-time caretaker on the grounds, but the thieves returned just weeks ago and have already made off with about 30 vases that once dotted the 12-hectare property outside Halifax
"The problem is the demand for copper and the prices the junkyards are paying," Mont said.
"I've got rewards out and called the RCMP on them. I mean, you're robbing someone's gravesite."
The vases cost about $400 apiece.