okay who has made money selling scrap metal?

I've started collecting aluminum cans... gonna cash in once I fill my 45 gallon can

I also have a bunch of stripped down PC cases that I know are made of steel - figure I'll sell those
and I picked up two really big pieces of (what I think is) iron pipe tonight - probably weigh 20 pounds a piece

so... any advice?

anybody know any current prices for the stuff?

2/6/2008 11:26:34 PM

I don't know about prices

but you could always start taking mufflers off of cars too

2/6/2008 11:28:46 PM

The best places to sell scrap metal close to here is either in Sanford, I think it's called Lee Iron and Metal (not real sure) or in Goldsboro at Wayne Salvage. Call ahead, tell them what you've got, how much of it, etc. and shop around. I'd wait until you get a bunch though cuz both places are around an hour away.

2/6/2008 11:39:05 PM

i did this a lot in high school

aluminum was always my best bet. mainly aluminum rims and outboard motor parts. a truckload of aluminum would get me hundreds.

steel wasn't too great. i could fill up a truck with engine parts, old farm equipment, and other equipment i stripped down and not even make $100.

i probably made $1500 doing it. i always agreed to load up and haul off any scrap metal for people for free, but sometimes they'd throw in a little extra. the only problem was that i had to take the steel from them to get the aluminum, but i figured it up once and was making an insanely high amount per hour.

metal was really high at that time, but i'm not sure if it's still up or not. the most important thing is to make sure you have it completely stripped so you'll get top dollar (if they'll take it at all with foreign materials).

[Edited on February 6, 2008 at 11:41 PM. Reason : ^goldsboro iron and metal was always better for me (goldsboro native)]

[Edited on February 6, 2008 at 11:48 PM. Reason : .]

2/6/2008 11:40:38 PM

TT&E is also a good place to sell scrap metal, and it's only a few minutes away in Garner

2/6/2008 11:40:38 PM

i think there is a metal place on garner rd in south raleigh. near the ymca

2/6/2008 11:41:59 PM

I live in Asheville

the yards available to me are:

Blue Ridge Metal Recycling
Tri State Scrap
Asheville Metal Recycle
Mountain Metals Recycling

2/6/2008 11:47:45 PM

apparently some chick on TWW is trying to get her bf to scrap his old ring, maybe you should ask her

2/6/2008 11:47:45 PM

damn u suck

2/6/2008 11:49:56 PM

yo momma sucks

2/6/2008 11:50:20 PM

I wish I had a pickup truck
... with the seats down my hatchback holds some stuff though

so how did you find the metal?

2/6/2008 11:52:18 PM

copper........deal with that

2/6/2008 11:53:07 PM

yeah no shit

where do you get copper?

wire, especially

2/6/2008 11:55:05 PM

^yeah, pretty much...........start gankin' peoples pipes

2/6/2008 11:56:14 PM

haha....dude, your not gonna get any...not legally

people dont just give it away or leave it lying around....they know how much that shit is worth

you need a shit ton of steel to make any kind of money

[Edited on February 7, 2008 at 12:01 AM. Reason : d]

2/6/2008 11:56:51 PM

probably won't find any free copper, you're right
I might get lucky and find a spool of wire somewhere though

so what things are made of aluminum that I didn't know were?
if I was looking for something to pick up and cannibalize what would provide the most return?

2/7/2008 12:00:42 AM

try hitting up machine shops for their slugs/chips. although most larger machine shops have a guy to whom they sell their chips and will come pick them up. so you may have better luck with smaller shops, they generally don't have enough to make it worth anyone's while to drive out and purchase them as scrap.

aluminum will bring you more than steel.

2/7/2008 12:04:01 AM

i found all my folks by word of mouth. i'm from the country and knew most folks around there. i'd do it for somebody, then someone they knew would find out and it just went from there. copper would bring a pretty penny, but all i ever could get my hands on were some old heater cores and stuff. copper is usually got up and cashed in pretty quick. plumbers and electricians know about this stuff. radiators are mostly aluminum. like i said, that seemed to be the metal with the right combination of availability and profit.

2/7/2008 12:04:32 AM

save yourself some time and think of a better way to make extra cash.

2/7/2008 12:05:03 AM

i forgot to mention old air conditioners. the cores are aluminum, but very light, so you'll need a bunch of them. aluminum rims were always my favorite. a screwdriver to pop all the weights off and a knife to cut out the valve stems and you had some $texas for little time investment.

2/7/2008 12:07:00 AM

Quote :

" so what things are made of aluminum that I didn't know were?"

you'll be able to tell by the weight. the density of steel is about 4x higher than the density of aluminum.

2/7/2008 12:07:32 AM

a magnet is your friend

2/7/2008 12:08:37 AM

^that works too.

2/7/2008 12:09:11 AM

I'm collecting cans from campus too

so bicycle rims are aluminum?

yeah I took apart an old hard drive for the magnet tonight so I could carry it with me
I've got gloves - I could use a mover's blanket

2/7/2008 12:11:27 AM

yes....most likely

[Edited on February 7, 2008 at 12:13 AM. Reason : d]

2/7/2008 12:12:52 AM

bicycles don't bring shit. too much time to pull apart and you might get a couple of lbs. aluminum, the rest is steel, and only a few lbs. at that.

2/7/2008 12:13:13 AM

so what are good appliances to look for?

you said air conditioners are good

2/7/2008 12:28:51 AM

aluminum cans get top value as aluminum goes at 30 to 80 cents per pound

the problem is that you need ~30 cans to make 1 pound

so to make $100, it will take 6000 cans if you get 50 cents each....not really worthwhile unless you plan to raid recycling bins around town

for iron and steel, i think the price is around 10 cents per pound, so for a car you could get $50 to 300 depending how well you prepared it(i.e. removing all non-ferrous material and crushing flat gets the best price)

copper is pretty good since it has a higher density than aluminum and can bring $2-4 per pound, but most people that have it know that and would not give it to you

[Edited on February 7, 2008 at 12:31 AM. Reason : .]

2/7/2008 12:30:18 AM

I'm getting aluminum cans pretty well
I live with 4 other people and they drink beer... as it warms up they'll drink more, crappier beer I hope

I also have started raiding the recycling on campus
especially following a weekend, the dorms are unloading tons of cans

2/7/2008 12:41:11 AM

speaking of 1ton of cans...60000 cans

it would take a space ~20ft x 20ft x 2ft tall to stack 1 ton of cans, depending on the particular can type and how you stack them

at any rate, that's a lot of space but could be worth $1000

i'm not trying to be discouraging, but it is good to calibrate expectations...you would need a big truck or a fast, cheap crusher

[Edited on February 7, 2008 at 1:07 AM. Reason : .]

2/7/2008 1:07:27 AM

I don't want $1000

I'd be thrilled with $40 extra bucks

[Edited on February 7, 2008 at 1:10 AM. Reason : - and my two boots are the fastest AND the cheapest crushers there are]

2/7/2008 1:09:34 AM

I have some rotors and a camshaft you can have. (steel)

2/7/2008 1:42:46 AM

I definitely appreciate the offer
but I do live in asheville

2/7/2008 10:15:06 AM

My roommate works construction and every friday he goes around to job sites and gets all the extra copper pipes. He makes about $150/wk. Sells for 4.something/lb. I'm sure you could do the same, just drive up to a house or building, ask someone that looks important. Most of the time everything gets thrown in the dumpster anyway.

2/7/2008 10:22:54 AM

Don't bother scrapping steel unless you're doing it in large quantities (on the order of tons). Steel goes for 4-8 cents per pound so it's going to take alot of weight to add up to something worthwhile.

Go for shiny copper ($2.00-3.00/lb), brass ($1.25-2.00/lb), and aluminum ($0.50-0.75/lb). Those are worth collecting even in smaller quantities.

If you have the time, a good way to find some good scrap metals is to drive around neighborhoods when people put their bulk trash out on the corner to be thrown away (the kind of trash people generate from yard work/cleaning out the garage). Some people don't realize what they're throwing away sometimes.

Backyard grills = aluminum
Junk car parts = aluminum, brass (radiators)
Anything electrical = copper, brass, aluminum

If you find copper wire, strip the coating off of it to get the highest price. You can scrap unstripped copper but you'll only get about half the price for it.

Go around with a magnet...if it's metal and the magnet doesn't stick, it's worth scrapping!

2/7/2008 10:35:18 AM

I think you'll be disappointed with the cans. I snatched about 15 yard sized trash bags full of them one time when I was in college and ended up getting $6 or something. Even if they are worth three times as much today it wouldn't be worth it in my opinion.

Aluminum is a little better. Old car rims are worth at least $4 each I'm sure. You could post a craigslist ad for bent/trashed aluminum wheels and see if you get any responses. Most ladders are aluminum, so when you see one on the side of the highway and has been crushed by a bunch of 18 wheelers you could grab it.

Copper is worth a lot. All the electricians I know save even the little scraps and just toss them in a trashcan. They'll fill a trashcan once a year or so and recycle it for $700. You get more if you strip wires first. I know a guy who cleared a huge spool of heavy gauge copper off someone's land and got over $1000 for it (he seriously didn't steal it, the guy just wanted it moved.)

I wouldn't even touch steel. It's not worth your gas to drive it there. I dismantled a bunch of huge copy machines for a company one time (by huge, I mean one machine was 6' tall and 8' long). Ended up filling a pickup truck and a 10' trailer with it and I think the steel yard gave us $45. That was a while back and it is probably worth more now, but still not worth it IMO.

Car radiators are a big money maker. It is an aluminum housing around a big copper core.

Catalytic converters are worth a ton. They have platinum inside which is why junkies all over NC are cutting them out of parked cars with a sawzall.

[Edited on February 7, 2008 at 10:44 AM. Reason : l]

2/7/2008 10:42:12 AM

were the cans crushed?
I know they're not very heavy but I'm just putting all of my aluminum (including PC heatsinks, etc) into one big bin - when it fills up I'll cash in

so the 20lb pieces of iron pipe are hardly worth anything, eh?

2/7/2008 10:49:05 AM

Lead can be decent if you find big pieces. The good thing about it is that a little 12x12x1 plate is probably 50 pounds.

2/7/2008 10:51:07 AM

the next time our campus ecology club puts all of their crap out on the quad to demonstrate how wasteful we, as Americans, are compared to other countries I'm going to scavenge through their piles

at the least I'm going to steal the power cord to EVERY junk appliance

2/7/2008 11:10:02 AM

HD enclosures are made out of aluminum
I was taking them apart for the magnet

one of my roommates is very negative - keeps telling me I'm not going to make ANY money on this
he's citing as experience the one time that he took a couple of contractor bags full of crushed cans and only got $5 for it

2/9/2008 11:09:45 AM

We would recycle when I threw huge parties... we would take 4-6 bags of cans down there and it would only be like $5-8



this is the amount of space 1454 + 392 cans will take up if uncrushed... and crushingly they won't take cans if they have been glued together b/c it won't fit through the little separator chute

2/9/2008 12:20:36 PM

^the least you couldve done was make the block S out of Budweiser cans...

2/9/2008 12:32:35 PM

600 lbs of steel got me $42

2/9/2008 12:33:02 PM

yeah that's why I didn't pick up this 400 lb iron radiator
it would have been like $40 to hurt my back

2/9/2008 12:42:48 PM

I got me 250 bucks for a honzo sword.

2/9/2008 12:46:32 PM

i thought this thread was for listing metal bands you no longer listen to.

i'm disappointed.

2/9/2008 12:48:35 PM

I am filling a 45 gallon container with crushed cans, heatsinks, faceplates and other aluminum pieces

how many pounds do you think 45 gallons of crushed cans would weigh?

2/9/2008 12:48:51 PM

Quote :

"the least you couldve done was make the block S out of Budweiser cans..."

busch light was a lot cheaper, we actually planned on doing it again in bud cans, had all the cans and everything, but then some shit happened and the whole thing ceased to be...

2/9/2008 1:18:58 PM

you could probably break that apart by stomping on it

2/9/2008 1:23:55 PM

haha, the belltower was tossed 3 years ago... but I definitely jumped into it, and dropped the people elbow on it, and being 3 layers deep it would just bounce you right off... you could have individually peeled 1454 cans apart, but that wouldn't have been worth the $15 or so... so it ended up in a dumpster... the NCSU hockey team has the block S as last I heard

2/9/2008 1:41:38 PM