I have been recycling metals for cash at the local scrapyards recently and in three months I have made over $700. I am averaging over $50 an hour.

Granted, most of my metals are coming from work, but it is all things that I was told to throw away.

FYI -

Iron
.05 cents /pound

Aluminum
.50 cents/ pound

Copper wire (insulated)
$1 / pound

Copper
$2.25 / pound

You would all be surprised how much scrap metal you can find when you actually start looking for it.

do they require you to burn off or remove the insulation from the copper wire before they will take it?
How about old brass rifle cases?
There are so many people down here picking up aluminum cans from the road you can't find them anymore.

I just made $240 today myself.  Mostly zinc at .05. Brass .75, And batteries $4 each.

Non Magnetic Stainless was down to .40  Less then half the price I got last month.


I'm reinvesting in Brass and lead

Quoted: do they require you to burn off or remove the insulation from the copper wire before they will take it? How about old brass rifle cases? There are so many people down here picking up aluminum cans from the road you can't find them anymore.

No. But if I did do it, they would give me $2.25 / pound.

i avaerage $25 a month from work in cans myself. not much i know but i work at a nursing home?:) cames in handy for very little work on my part.

I am going to start selling my plasma.  That will be my new "toy" fund.

My .308 brass, which is mostly mil-surp, I'm going to sell that to a dealer.

Medicguy

Quoted: I am going to start selling my plasma.  That will be my new "toy" fund. My .308 brass, which is mostly mil-surp, I'm going to sell that to a dealer. Medicguy

I sold plasma for a year. It helped me buy my wifes engagement ring. I did it twice a week for a year and make $50 a week for 2 hours worth of work.

plasma here is just $60 a week

Quoted: plasma here is just $60 a week

What plasma?

BTW my son scraps. Lately though scrap is getting hard to come by because everyone is scrapping.

Quoted: Quoted: plasma here is just $60 a week What plasma? BTW my son scraps. Lately though scrap is getting hard to come by because everyone is scrapping.

I get 90% of my scrap from work. Lots of aluminum tubing.

Plasma is in your blood. You donate plasma platelettes from your blood, then they pump it back in to your arm. It does not make you tired like donating blood.

It was the easiest money I ever made. Just lay down, have them prick you with a needle, and watch TV for an hour.

I work at a solid waste dispoal facility (a dump)and we get tons of metal in a week.  Most everyone is wanting copper since the salvage yard is paying almost $4.00 a pound for grade 1.  I have a person who comes up and takes the boards  from washers, dryers and copy machines to somehow recycles the gold, silver and in some cases platinum from the terminals.  He makes good money doing it too.  I wish I knew what exactly he is taking an how to take the metal out of it so I can make some money off of these too.

Quoted: plasma here is just $60 a week

WTF? the places I went to would give you $30 the first two times, but after that the most you could get in a a week was $25.  $15 the first visit, $10 the next.

I live near the Wendys Headquarters.

Once a month I spend 30 minutes eating some new menu item they test and rating it, and they pay me $25 when I'm done eating. Usually it's more than one person can eat in a sitting.....

I love being paid to eat.

I live near the Wendys Headquarters.

Once a month I spend 30 minutes eating some new menu item they test and rating it, and they pay me $25 when I'm done eating. Usually it's more than one person can eat in a sitting.....

I love being paid to eat.

Im a scrap whore, I'm a construction laborer, get a loooooot of scrap

I've been scrapping wire for quite a while now.  I have used some of it for the same things you are talking about.  I was using it to stock up on ammo.  I threw away wire at work forever before i got fed up at the waste (i was broke and just out of school at the time), then started scrapping it.  There were times that the wire money got me by.  Now i have paid off all my debt except for school loans, and got an 8K a year raise, so now the copper money is just for whatever..

I have been turning works junk into cash for a while now...its the only way I can afford to shoot.    As of late it has been hijacked to pay other bills.    

Last prices

Sheet Alum. $0.65
steel  un prep $0.075
lead acid batts  $0.05
the copper brass and stainless  I have not taken in in a while


My last run was steel got $10.20  bought dinner last night at the fire station.

As the wire question goes the one of the places I go is paying $0.75 for covered wire.

if you burn it off you get the copper 3 price like $2.05
strip it by hand  copper 1 $3.50


Right now I have close to 2000 pounds of non ferrious I have to break and seperate into alum, stainless and brass...not enough time in the day

The place where I work sold several barrels of used petoleum products and actualy made quite a bit of money.

I think we got 5.00 for lead batteries as well.

We have a truck come around for steel every few months and that brings in a couple hundred dollars as well.

Quoted: I work at a solid waste dispoal facility (a dump)and we get tons of metal in a week.  Most everyone is wanting copper since the salvage yard is paying almost $4.00 a pound for grade 1.  I have a person who comes up and takes the boards  from washers, dryers and copy machines to somehow recycles the gold, silver and in some cases platinum from the terminals.  He makes good money doing it too.  I wish I knew what exactly he is taking an how to take the metal out of it so I can make some money off of these too.

There was a guy about an hour north in an industrial area "doing this" - He actually was cutting and melting off any terminals/gold, and any high dollar connectors/bolts/etc were put up front in the store for selling to tinkerers....  It kinda held toegether for a while, except that he didn't pay his taxes...

When the landlord came in to take over the place, he was innundated with metric shitloads (acres) of boxes of lead and other hazard PC boards and other computer monitors, and he ended up paying a small fortune to have it hauled off by a "real" pc board salvage company, whom presumably sent it to china...

Moral of the story - There is a reason that most electronics recycling costs someone money (i.e. Nokia paying for it up front, or someone charging businesses to dispose of electronics), and it's likely because legitimate disposal costs a lot to do....  I know a guy pulling specific chips off of boards and selling them on fleabay to repair old models of some specific telecom equipment, since the chips are not made any more...

Neverthless, I think it can be a tough business to do within the US EPA regulations.

yah, lots of folks finding scap all over.....grounding bars on cell sites.....had some aholes cut the hardline off a working cell siter.........be careful you can account for where you got it.........

Our plant does things all the time. We get our material off barges, and dock space is tight, alternating cement barge & aggregate barges with close times. Men ready to change over, tugs in the river to swap out.

One night the night shift came in to offload an aggregate barge, and one guy saw someone on foot (0200). He was in a loader and called to the other guy in a loader to come back. The three thieves knew they were busted and dove into the river. The guy in the car shot out the gate.


They had cut the wires off the big crane, and were over near the huge cables that supply electricity to the cement barges.

I dont know whats bigger than 220v, but thats what the cement barge uses, these cables are friggin huge. They have no clue the wires were live, getting caught saved their lives.


And SPD refused to come out.


And we have a no firearms policy at work.

Scrapped a lot when I was a teenager, still do on occasion.

My favorite scrapping story is "The Fishing Shacks."

One of my high school instructors informed me and a buddy that he needed some work done on a lake property he owned. Seems he had leased the property to several fisherman years earlier; they built fishing shacks on there, and one by one quit paying rent over the years. He decided it was time to clean the property out.

He promised cash money for a few days of jolly demolition and truck loading - hardly an offer we could pass up!

Unfortunately when we got out there we quicly figured out we'd been bait 'n switched. We spent the day in the Texas heat pulling junk piles out of overgrown brush piles, fighting off wasps and copperheads all the while being restricted to only getting water once an hour.

We did our days work, split the $50 he payed us, and headed home vowing never to return.

We relayed this story to another friend of ours a few days later, a friend who's father happened to be a big time scrapper - he took particular interest in the junk piles and the fact that the fishing shacks were WIRED for lights and power outlets. A plan was concocted...

The next day at school we approached our instructor with a proposition - we would NOT do any more work for him, but if he didn't mind we'd go out there and haul some stuff off on our own. He was baffled as to why we would want to do this for free, but figured it would get junk off his property so he gave us his blessing.

The next weekend we drove out there equipped with my long bed truck, various implements of destruction, and a LOT of water. We promptly set about pulling every inch of wire from the property and raiding the junk piles for every refrigerator, air conditioner, aluminum ladder, or anything else of value we could find.

As the day went on the instructor brought out a new group of students he'd recruited - they watched in wonder as we went about our work, taking frequent breaks to smoke and take long pulls off of our chilled water jugs. They finally walked over to inquire as to what we were doing out there, and how we were working with such better conditions - we informed them that we were "independents."

At the end of the day we left, my long bed Dodge loaded to 2ft over the cab with junk tied down with romex and the springs flattened to the axles.

A few weeks later, after the wire had been stripped, the copper salavged, and the aluminum cleaned of rivets we drove to the city and sold the fruits of our labor for a healthy sum, and in doing so learned the value of scrap metal and self-employment.

Quoted: I work at a solid waste dispoal facility (a dump)and we get tons of metal in a week.  Most everyone is wanting copper since the salvage yard is paying almost $4.00 a pound for grade 1.  I have a person who comes up and takes the boards  from washers, dryers and copy machines to somehow recycles the gold, silver and in some cases platinum from the terminals.  He makes good money doing it too.  I wish I knew what exactly he is taking an how to take the metal out of it so I can make some money off of these too.

He's incinerating the components, then adding it to a chemical bath (arsenic solution), and then electro-plating the PM's onto a reducible attractor that will turn to ash when he smelts it back down for purity.

Discovery Channel just had a program on the process about two weeks ago.

What is the going rate for steel?

I have a real thick dump bed on a M35 duece and 1/2.  It's only the bottom frame. Has surface rust.  Any idea on what it might be made of and value per lb?  Might finance some ammo, it has got to be REAL heavy.

A little FYI for the Survival Forum regarding the subject.
I know many here have SUVs, and the topic of the thread seems appropriate for this bulletin.

During the month of August 2007, several vehicles in ****** County had their catalytic converters removed while parked for an extended period of time. Intelligence on the type of theft has shown that SUV’s are the biggest target because their catalytic converters can be removed easily and quickly.  The ground clearance the vehicle has provides the perpetrator sufficient room to conduct this activity. This theft has seen a significant rise due to three precious metals the catalytic converters contains.  Small amounts of platinum, palladium and rhodium are contained inside a catalytic converter.  These metals have seen their commodity rates skyrocket in the past two years. According to an online commodity Web site (www.kitco.com), the price of rhodium has risen in the past five years from $380 to $6,000 per ounce. It closed this week at $6,140. Palladium rose from about $200 per ounce two years ago to $330 this week close. Between April 2005 and November 2006, the price of platinum rose by more than 60 percent, from $865 per ounce to $1,300. This week's close was $1,290. Thieves are trading catalytic converters in to some precious metal recyclers that will accept them for about $100 apiece.  Others who extract the platinum, palladium and rhodium can sell the metals for thousands. It is estimated that the average converter contains 1 to 2 grams of platinum, palladium and rhodium. That equals about 0.07 of an ounce, meaning 14 or 15 converters are needed to equal one ounce of the metals. These thefts go hand in hand with copper theft, another metal that has seen a recent increase in theft due to higher commodity rates. Pieces containing copper have been stolen from new home developments and train track areas.

Quoted: What is the going rate for steel?

Stainless - .40 / lb

Scrap metal - .05 / lb

Quoted: A little FYI for the Survival Forum regarding the subject. I know many here have SUVs, and the topic of the thread seems appropriate for this bulletin. During the month of August 2007, several vehicles in ****** County had their catalytic converters removed while parked for an extended period of time. Intelligence on the type of theft has shown that SUV’s are the biggest target because their catalytic converters can be removed easily and quickly.  The ground clearance the vehicle has provides the perpetrator sufficient room to conduct this activity. This theft has seen a significant rise due to three precious metals the catalytic converters contains.  Small amounts of platinum, palladium and rhodium are contained inside a catalytic converter.  These metals have seen their commodity rates skyrocket in the past two years. According to an online commodity Web site (www.kitco.com), the price of rhodium has risen in the past five years from $380 to $6,000 per ounce. It closed this week at $6,140. Palladium rose from about $200 per ounce two years ago to $330 this week close. Between April 2005 and November 2006, the price of platinum rose by more than 60 percent, from $865 per ounce to $1,300. This week's close was $1,290. Thieves are trading catalytic converters in to some precious metal recyclers that will accept them for about $100 apiece.  Others who extract the platinum, palladium and rhodium can sell the metals for thousands. It is estimated that the average converter contains 1 to 2 grams of platinum, palladium and rhodium. That equals about 0.07 of an ounce, meaning 14 or 15 converters are needed to equal one ounce of the metals. These thefts go hand in hand with copper theft, another metal that has seen a recent increase in theft due to higher commodity rates. Pieces containing copper have been stolen from new home developments and train track areas.

That happened at our company also.......

Quoted: Quoted: plasma here is just $60 a week WTF? the places I went to would give you $30 the first two times, but after that the most you could get in a a week was $25.  $15 the first visit, $10 the next.

my place gve $20 for the first donation of the week then the second is $40 for a total of $60 each week and if you get another donor to join $10 bonus.

Any risks to donating plasma??  Where do you donate?  Red Cross??

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: plasma here is just $60 a week WTF? the places I went to would give you $30 the first two times, but after that the most you could get in a a week was $25.  $15 the first visit, $10 the next. my place gve $20 for the first donation of the week then the second is $40 for a total of $60 each week and if you get another donor to join $10 bonus.

You guys are missing the easy money.
Cars/trucks. Bringing top dollar.
We cut off cat, pull cores (starter,alt) and batt to sell separately.
And wheels, IF aluminum.
Folks are realizing it now, and starting to get a lot of competition.
Most farms around here have at least a dozen somewhere out back.
We just offer to "haul them off for nothing".
"Good" stuff goes on ebay or up to Carlise.

Quoted: Any risks to donating plasma??  Where do you donate?  Red Cross?? Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: plasma here is just $60 a week WTF? the places I went to would give you $30 the first two times, but after that the most you could get in a a week was $25.  $15 the first visit, $10 the next. my place gve $20 for the first donation of the week then the second is $40 for a total of $60 each week and if you get another donor to join $10 bonus.

+1.  I've got the same question.  As I understand it, they extract whole blood, filter out the plasma and return the rest into your veins.  Being a cautious individual, before I did anything like that, I'd need to have some comfort level regarding the sterilization procedures for the machine that filters out the plasma.  I assume they use new needles and tubes, but what good does that do if they don't sterilize the filtering machine and the previous user was an AIDS-infected Hep B positive leper?  

im getting 150 a ton for steel around my way.

aluminum was about .75 a pound last time i had some. i have 5 scrap honda engine blocks, 5 or so aluminum oil pans, some alumimum tubing about about 10 radiators right now.

im a mechanic so i save all the old rotors and heavy steel. place around my way are paying 5$ per steel wheel. we used to throw them away. one place is buying batteries for 10$.

the real money is in converters. i try to get them off of all the junk cars that come through the shop. and hold on to them whenever we replace them at the shop. my dad owns the shop, so we have a partnership arranged on the converter money. some places are buying jap converters for upwards of 200$ a peice.

selling scrap is a decent way to make a little extra cash. iits probably hard to make a living at it, but a little cash on the side never hurts.

I've done my fair share of scrapping.   And I still don't let free metals get away from me.


My single largest load:  1,212 pounds of clean plate aluminum,  in the form of the sides of
empty reels of magnetic recording tape.     It was loaded into the back seats and trunk of
my old '78 Cadillac.  It tipped the scales at an even 6000 pounds going into the recycling
outfit's yard.    The car drove funny with that much weight in it.  I'd turn the steering wheel
and have to wait about half a second for the car to catch up!  

Prices then weren't what they are now but it was still nice to get 500 bucks cash for this
pile of metal that cost me literally nothing but time to strip and pile up.  Stripping the reels
down all the way to bare plates and loose hubs (also aluminum) took eight solid hours.

I've got four buckets of assorted reject live ammo in my garage.  About 500 pounds of
brass, bullets, unburned powder, and live primers.     But I'd drive myself insane trying
to pull down each bullet to components,  I think!


CJ

Does anyone know what metals can be found in a computer that are recycleable? Is there any gold, platinum, etc.?

How is it removed?

I work for a electrical, voice/data company and let me tell you that any wire that gets left at a job site is very promptly snagged for scrap by someone. Heck one time we even had someone take a whole pallet of wire from a locked site.

One guy just got fired for keeping all the scrap wire from his jobs (they figure he managed to clear over 10 grand from all the scrap he was keeping).

I walk into the shop and see barrels and barrels of scrap wire sitting there waiting to go to the scrap yard and just wish one or two of them would find their way into the back of my truck but it is not worth a career for make a few hundred.

My company is averaging over a grand a week just in scrap wire. But I do have to admit that some of the cash they get for it goes to good use (company sponsored pheasant hunts).