Thar’s gold in them thar payphones. Gold coloring, that is.

This shiny spool of metal (most likely copper) lay exposed for several weeks in a Manhattan subway station. It is part of the payphone’s innards.

This is what the inside of a payphone looks like.

Copper is valued at about $3.33 a pound. I am no prospector but the quantity of the precious metal seen in this photo would not seem to be enough to attract a coördinated heist. Then again, thieves will steal anything, especially when it’s pretty.

I do not know if it was looted by thieves or removed by its owner but this spool of copper was gone after a few weeks, leaving a nearly-empty payphone stand which unattractively makes itself useful to absolutely nobody.

The payphone was owned by PTS (Pacific Telemanagement Services), the company that acquired all of Verizon’s subway payphones and has since removed most of them. Many subway stations today have zero working payphones.

If thieves and looters are on the lookout for copper such as this then they have yet to spot this hunk of the precious metal. It sits within the remains of an Astoria payphone that has lingered for years in the corner of a parking lot.