Posted: 7/12/2008 7:02:48 AM EDT
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Was helping a buddy clear up his junkyard of a backyard and found some copper wire and some brass locks. Decided to haul them to the local scrap yard. I only had a 5gal. bucket full. I figured if it atleast covered the gas and few extra bucks Id be happy. At this particular place they were paying $1.30 for copper & $1.90 for brass. I ended up netting $35bux for the haul. I drove about 10-15miles tops round trip. So worst case it cost me $10bux in gas. And it was on my way home from his house so it wasnt out of my way. Hey free money is free money. lol They were open from 8am til noon. This place was mobbed. There was a line about 1/4 mile long to get into this place. People were bringing all kinds of stuff. One dude had an old paver on the back of a trailer with scrap all on it and around it. Basically if it was metal of some sort ppl were bringing it in. old lawnmowers, tin siding, aluminum siding, copper, etc etc etc. THe thing that struck me as odd was in the past they would put copper into 2 diff. categories, one was CLEAN copper ,meaning no plastic coating and then dirty or mixed copper, which had the plastic coating. I remember bums would burn the copper in a bathtub to get the plastic off. When I called for copper prices they told me $1.30 it didnt matter if it was cleaned or not. The same with the brass locks I had, Im sure there was steel or some other metal inside, years ago they would do magnetic check, they didnt even bother this time. I dont know if they were just so busy (which they were), or they just dont worry about those things. This place was super swamped for sure. Workers, ppl, trucks, trailers , all moving about, looked like rushhour traffic downtown. Im not sure what the scrap yards are like in other regions, but if they are anything like this one, ppl should be cashing in. INstead of paying ppl to take your old junk, turn it into cash. There was ppl taking appliances, washers, fridges, etc etc. Normally you have to pay to dump it at the city dump. But I guess ppl can turn that into scrap as well. So, if you have ANYTHING remotely metal, id be saving it up and turning into cash. One thing I would do b4 hauling your crap all over town is to call ahead and get the pricing and make sure they will take what you have. There was one scrap yard that only took aluminum, nothing else. Anyways, it was interesting. thought id share. 
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Not sure, when I called I simply asked about COPPER, not clean , stripped or with jacketing. So Im guessing this is a flat rate. There are alot of lazy ppl around here and most wouldnt bother burning off the jacketing like ppl use to do years ago. So I dunno. |
I missed this the first time i read it
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| Yea that is what I had figured , maybe if I showed up with #1 copper id gotten a better price. I may call them next week and ask if there is a price diff. between the 2. It didnt matter in this case cuz I wasnt going to take the time to strip this out. But maybe next time. who knows. I think ill start saving ANYTHING metal from now on, weather its old nuts/bolts, copper, aluminun. Ill start saving up in a bucket and turn it in on occasion. Scrapping is BIG business around here. This is ppls livelyhood in most cases, they just drive around and get scrap. |
Another rip off that some scrap places try to get away with........ You should get #1 price for copper that is burnt off........ although it's illegal to burn it now if you happen to get some from a house that burned etc etc it should bring #1 price |
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Yup, clean copper goes for 2.80 - 3.20 per pound around here. You got fucked. |
Here in Vegas they steal it even if it is bolted down. They take the copper wire from the highway lights all the time.  www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=8191156 The lucrative wiring is found in air conditioning systems, utility substations, light poles and more. Criminals see copper as a shining opportunity and quick cash. Long stretches of highway in the valley have no working street lights for several miles. The copper wiring has been ripped from the poles. Crooks take it to scrap yards to cash in. It costs the city of Las Vegas more than 1 million a year to replace the copper. "These are tough times and people are watching their pennies," said Mayor Oscar Goodman. The mayor is familiar with the courtroom, but Thursday he went against a defendant as a victim advocate on behalf of the taxpayers. Thirty-one-year-old Scott Helm is just one criminal who's ripped off the city for the sake of copper. "The people who steal it have to be punished severely," said Goodman. The last big hit for the city was at Firefighters Memorial Park. Rikki Jones walks her dogs there daily. She was surprised to learn desperate thieves will even steal copper from the park honoring fallen heroes. She says the lack of lighting is a safety issue. "It's dangerous. You don't know who's going to be. There's a lot of places you can go and no one can see you, so it can be a place for robbers and stuff too," she said. Last Friday, copper crooks came and they started ripping, cutting, and pulling, leaving most of the park in the dark. Crews got the lights back on at a hefty price of $6,000. With documents from the city already forecasting a bleak economic outlook, and proposed budget cuts bringing delays in streetlight response and repair times, copper capers are a concern. "If it's copper, they're ripping it out," said Metro Lt. Robert Duvall. Police are making sure recycling centers are keeping records and following the law. "We hold them to the letter of the law, thereby preventing less of an opportunity for thieves to get paid by stealing copper," he said. Goodman hopes thieves will see defendants like Helm and get the message. He was ordered to pay more than $8,000 in restitution and spend more than a year behind bars. His ex-girlfriend says he, like so many other copper thieves, was hooked on methamphetamine. |
Dont see how, my copper wasnt clean. |
"clean" means it not insulared by witing or anything like that, some with mild corrosion or soder is #2 -10-30cents off clean price. shiny like new (just stolen) copper is called Bare Bright |
In my AO dirty copper is 10 cents less per pound than clean copper. I have also found that they are getting pickier in my AO too. Before if you had just a little bit of insulator on the end of some otherwise clean wire, they might overlook it. But now, any insulator and everything its intertangled with/ bound with goes as dirty. I have also seen them scraping/hacksawing items more frequently now to make sure they aren't plated. About a year ago, I took in a 40 pound part that some idiots deposited on my property, that was made of 400 series (magnetic) stainless. It wasn't worth squat, but I was scrapping some other stuff too. The price for 400 stainless is (or at least was) the same as regular steel. There was a few steel bolts/ nuts on the part, and they were insistant that those go or they would pay even less for it Also, when you call in and get a quote, get names. Develop a working relationship with the manager= you will get treated better, and less chance that they will try to lowball you.
Sounds a little low. Around here, #1 Clean copper is $2.80/pound. Distance from where your local yard sells it to can decrease prices though. |
| The yard that I deal with for our scrap calls Mondays "Crack Head Monday" because they all come out of the woodwork to cash in all the scrap that they managed to find/steal over the weekend. I never take scrap in on Mondays because I usually have at least 1000lbs of #1 copper and I don't want to start carrying THREE back up mags just to keep the crack heads away. Midday, midweek seems to be best. |
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I was unemployed from December 7th, 2007 until May, 2008. It was a real SHTF situation for my family and one of the ways I survived was scrapping junk that friends and business associates gave me. One of the business guys game me literally tons of old medical equipment-good deal for me and him-I hauled it off at no charge to him and it was worth a good deal of $$$. I didn't keep a running total, but I made somewhere in the neighborhood of $5000.00 between carrying copper, tin and aluminum to the scrap yard and selling the lead from the equipment @$0.50/pound to the black powder shooters. There was almost 2 tons of lead alone in this equipment. I also learned that there are other valuable (Precious) metals in electronics. If you know what you're doing you can reap some big $$$. The real bottom line is watch the guy your dealing with a make sure your not getting hosed, but really they set the prices on a day to day level around here. |
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I work for a voice/data company (read lots of scrap wire but it is all 24 gauge). We are not allowed to burn the jacket off the wire or there is no place around here that will even buy it, they tell you to get it off their property. I have had several thousand feet of cat6 wire stolen off a job site in the last few weeks tho. I know the guy at the major recycling place and he will not take any wire that is still on the roll or that looks like it was just unrolled. We even caught a guy who had stolen 9k feet of our wire when he tried to turn it in and the manager called me. From what I have seen the electrical companys are going to some extreme lengths to protect their wire on job sites. Some are even hiring security guards to sit at the job site all night and watch stuff, kinda scary when it is cheaper to hire a guard to watch your wire than it is to replace a couple of thousand feet. |
I always try to go on Tuesday or Wednesday for that very reason. The crackies and tweakers are at home getting high on the money they got on Monday for the most part and we regular folks/non-criminals can get through the process much easier. I still go armed, but there are a lot less "odd people" there for sure. 
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| Have to remember some "scrap" is worth a heck of a lot more then scrap metal prices. I have sold a pair brass door locks and handles for over $300 a set befor. I have a friend that has cultivated a relationship with a scrap yard and he gets to pick through anything that looks good. He sold some old fountain parts for $5,000 that some slow head brought in and sold for like $3 a lb thinking he was doing good....Todd |
Burning the coating off it is illegal and will cost you a LOT more than it will bring. It is a felony in GA. GR |
Well, everything else is as well. 
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In NY it's a misdemeanor with a $1500 fine (1st offense) to burn anything for salvage. |
I've got some copper those meth-heads can have.
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Might be illegal but I see burned copper at the scrap and have seen alot of people do it, never heard of anyone getting arrested |
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This is a HUGE business right now. I have a customer that owns one, every time I'm there cars are backed up 5 and 10 deep and this is in a small town of maybe 2,000? The guy has expanded his business, bought more advertising, he basically said "the worse the economy gets, the more people bring to me." I suspect the pawnshops are doing well right now also. Signs of the times. Lowdown3 |
My grandfather said almost the same thing before he passed All the scraping he did as a kid in the 30's he got back as an adult in the 40's \ |
that was there problem right there. what business has hours from 8-4 during the best business cycle of the last decade? retards. schnitzer steel (local to me) has regular hours, 8-5, i usually wait 3-5 minutes to get in. recently started getting my money for my scrap metal, used to i'd just dump it off to avoid driving to the dump and paying. schnitzer is about 4 miles closer to my house than the dump. |
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eta- I just got hooked up with my neighbor, he's one of the main machinist for a local company. they can't keep up with their regular work, and they throw out all their scrapped aluminum in the trash! extruded al, highest grade. I get to pick up all of the scrap aluminum now, i think it will be at least 3-400$ worth in the first haul. sad thing is the company is moving in two months. he also has some very nice (although heavy) aluminum tubes that i could use if i paid the tax stamp to make my own suppressors, although only for rimfire. |
I have.  GR |
I work for a compressed gas cylinder company and all the scrap yards we have been delivering to in the Orlando area are balls to the wall busy. We have upgraded several of the larger companys from high pressure cylinders to Dewars or permaseal's (Micro bulk) Oxygen and bulk propane or acetylene. The salvage yards are also picking up as well. I had my oxygen tanker blocked in on several different ocasions where They about started a riot when workers tried to get me out. On my pallet truck I had several down town orlando bums trying to steal the aluminum medical "e" cylinders from my truck with me in it. yup scrap business is up Edited to add: For a small fee some of the scappers here have a machine for all guages of wire (from small electronics to high tension power lines) are fed through and stripped of insulation and cut into what looks like 2 or 3 foot lengths, then weighed. The insulation/ plastic also gets recycled but you are not given anything for it
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