Why do YOU scrap?

I know alot of guys scrap to help pay the bills, but why else do you guys scrap? I do it to support my hobbies and to buy car stuff. Bought a $500 toolbox with scrap, Stuff for the sled, Now im scrapping to buy a nice car to drive in the summer.

Really, it all started when I spotted an orange extension cord sitting on top of someone's trash can one day. I'd just read about copper going over $4 a pound (it was awhile back) and how people were stealing things with copper in them... and here this guy was throwing some copper away. It really opened my eyes to how people literally throw dollar bills out at their curb because they're either too lazy, or not informed as to the value of these items, or simple don't want to bother with it.

So, simplest answer: extra money... but it's really more nuanced than that. Something along the lines of the satisfaction of making decent extra cash from stuff others regarded as waste, I suppose, is a very simplified way of putting it.

EDIT: and another thing is all the very useful (even BRAND NEW) stuff you find scrapping. Right now I'm sitting in a chair that was brand new still wrapped in plastic when I got it, typing on a brand new when I got it keyboard, reading my posts on a brand new when I got it this week monitor that replaced my (used when I got it) older monitor, which itself replaced the last monitor I bought (and the last I'll ever buy).

Oh, and don't get me started on printers. I could literally just use a printer til it ran out of ink, throw it out on the trailer to go to my printer buyer, and garb another out of the pile to use til it ran out of ink. I have 2 or 3 printers still in the box I'm saving for who knows what, along with spare ink for all of them still in the wrapper.

I'm forever giving people music files on sdmicro cards, and when they look at me funny, I say, oh, just keep it... I have dozens.

Light bulbs. Fans. Adapters in any conceivable voltage. A/V cabling of any conceivable type. I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting at the moment...

To help pay bills buuuuuuuut.....I don't think I could stop now if I tried. I'm hooked. HOOKED!!!!

It started out for me, when my grammas old house was tore down and dad told me to run the scrap up for some money. Huh? WTH are you talking about????? I took it up, they put money in my hand and I said to myself, ''Well I can do this, they just gave me money for junk!!''

The main reason of course is for money but it also gives me quality time with my parents, taught my kids about recycling AND it has filled my moms yard with so much ''yard art'' that folks throw away SHE IS HOOKED as well lol.

The amount of almost new furniture I've found and kept is .....silly. Household furniture, Yard furniture, yard art, mowers, tools - I think I shop for myself, my parents and my neighbors more than I shop to turn in any more lol.

I also have started to sell stuff that gets split into 2 pots this year - me and moms and me and dads. Each pot is used for something the respected paring likes to do (or buy) that doesn't come out of household money.

My dads gone crazy round the bend with that now too lol, have to take my phone off the hook some days lol.


I like being my own boss mainly, if I screw up, its on me. My own boss is the main reason but its just so much more than that really

I got started by curb shopping for antiques to put in the booth I had at an antiques store, got tired of seeing soooo much metal in the trash that I started picking that up too. Now I have moved to an area that does not have curb side pick up, so now I just hit up computer repair shops.

Scrapping is like finding dollars and cents on the ground. You don't leave them there, you pick them up and pocket them.

I scrap for "our" national forest, to keep metal out of landfills, to re use parts and pieces to better my own life.

That being said it's nice to have a complete hardware store in my shed and plenty of materials around to build or fix just about anything. the money is good but giving trash a new purpose or cleaning up a dump site in the woods puts me in a better mood than having all the cash in the bank. money can't buy that kind of satisfaction

I can't lie, get into scrapping right after my dad was bragging how much he sold some old car radiators for ! Two days latter pulled out the passenger seat out of my Mazda rx-7 and hauled in 650 pounds of cast stuffed in the hatch area and where the seat should've been. After that, been a scrap metal addict every since ! Yeah I do it for the greenbacks, but I enjoy it too ! The way I figure it some ppl golf, some go coon hunting, and some fish but me, I have a hobby that makes me $ instead of spending it.

I started scraping because I needed some physical activity that I could control how much or little I did it.(I had kidney disease and was very ill) I have had hobbies that paid off in money and were interesting. My last serious hobby other than ham radio was under water metal detecting, which was interesting and profitable.

Scraping has given me a lot, money, exercise, a reason to continue to learn new things. I really don't want to drag this out but scraping and this forum have been great for me. Mike.

Love taking what most think is junk and turning it into "Doe Ray Me".