Copyright (c) symbol, mysql and utf8

I extracted metadata from my image files and stored them in a mysql
table using the default .yml configuration. The meta data includes a
lot of “Copyright © Kip 2007 blah blah blah” (only with the real
symbol \251).

When I display the information from my app in a browser I got the
“square” replacing the symbol. SInce the headers all looked fine if
figured it was the database connection. So I changed the connection
to “encoding: utf8” and voila, the symbol appears correctly.

However, now when I reload the metadata the information is truncated
at the symbol (ie. on the 'Copyright ’ makes it to the database.

Summary:
“encoding default” i can store the right data, but not display it
“encoding: utf8” I can display the right data, but not store it.

The database is utf8, the collation is utf8-general.

Any suggestions or pointers would be much appreciated!

Cheers, --Kip