Despite earthquake-induced runups in the primary copper market, secondary prices have held their ground and some grades have even softened over the course of the week as dynamics shift from a sellers' to a buyers' market.

May-delivery copper settled at $3.3755 per pound on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange on Thursday, down 1.7 percent from the previous day but still 2.8 percent higher than the $3.284-per-pound settlement recorded Feb. 26, the last trading day before the 8.8-magnitude earthquake hit the copper-mining nation of Chile.

"It's crazy. It's clearly psychological more than anything," one brass and bronze ingot maker said of copper's runup in exchange trading. "I just think it was way overdone. I can get to about $3.20, $3.25 (per pound) copper as an economic case, but I can't get to the $3.50" mark that copper approached early in the week.

But while cathode prices jumped some 10 cents during the week on fears of supply disruption, copper...