Walk me through it

[Morsecode]

I've never been to a scrapyard so some of this may sound naive

Let's suppose it's June 30, 2014, a couple months after the gov't decided to officially lift the melt ban on copper cents. If a person showed up at their local yard with say 250 lbs of sorted cents, how would the buyer know whether the coins were in fact pre-'82? There could potentially be a lot of room for error in that many coins I would think.

Would they have to be counted by them and then weighed?

Just curious...

[Dr. Cadmium]

If you've never been to a scrapyard, you shouldn't just walk into one with a large quantity of hard-earned non-ferrous metal.

That's asking to get taken advantage of.

The first step is to find out what yards are in your area. The yellowpages are a good start.

Next is to call on the phone and ask for prices on basic materials.

Third step is to scout each yard. Bring in some small amounts of different metals and see which one prices better, sorts better, or has better service.

Being a regular customer at a yard will generally get you better prices and better service when it comes time to sell your more valuable metals.

Pennies: I'm curious about how a typical scrapyard will be able to tell a bucket of copper from zinc from mixed. My guess is density would be the way to go, using a more accurate scale than most basic yards have now. Other methods would be too slow. This is where being a regular (honest!) customer comes in - if you routinely bring in well-sorted loads, your buckets of pennies will be less-scrutinized.

[messymessy]

I suspect that not all scrap yards would accept pennies for scrap. Only the scrap yards with the special equipment to tell zinc pennies from copper would pay top dollar. Other scrapyards might pay a lot less than #1 copper for pennies, and base that price on the value of zinc pennies.

[Kurr]

IF the melt ban were lifted, I would take in my shiny bars that USED TO BE cents, and they could hit it with the tester.

No melt law anymore, right?

[mtalbot_ca]

IF the melt ban were lifted, I would take in my shiny bars that USED TO BE cents, and they could hit it with the tester.

No melt law anymore, right?

Good point,

Would it be better to have it refined or melted first or directly and get them tranformed into bars? or maybe you it would cost too much.

[PennyBoy]

I suspect that not all scrap yards would accept pennies for scrap. Only the scrap yards with the special equipment to tell zinc pennies from copper would pay top dollar. Other scrapyards might pay a lot less than #1 copper for pennies, and base that price on the value of zinc pennies.

Just curious, doesn't anyone think they will classify pre 82s as brass? Which in turn in less than copper.

[68Camaro]

A quick rough estimate of weight of outstanding copper pennies is on the order of 300,000 TONS. If the melt ban goes away, and price of copper remains up, there will be people setting up special lines to process pennys, and no matter what you call them, you will get a higher percentage of melt than the local scrap yard would offer, assuming you can get them to the processor.

[PennyBoy]

A quick rough estimate of weight of outstanding copper pennies is on the order of 300,000 TONS. If the melt ban goes away, and price of copper remains up, there will be people setting up special lines to process pennys, and no matter what you call them, you will get a higher percentage of melt than the local scrap yard would offer, assuming you can get them to the processor.

Quick, someone register PennyScrapper.com! Yes, as of this post, it is available for all you domainers out there.

[fasTT]

Kurr has it right.

Melt into bars of what would be considered number 1 brass and sell to the highest bidder.

[PennyBoy]

Kurr has it right.

Melt into bars of what would be considered number 1 brass and sell to the highest bidder.

Unfortunately, we're not all as talented as Kurr. I'll guess I'll just be selling my pennies as scrap. Unless of course Kurr becomes a buyer.