Hey everyone, I have been doing a little research on this but figured you all would be able to best give me a little more insight to this. I live about 10-15 miles from a popular shooting area, where I visited today and it is littered with bullet casings and spent shotgun shells. I picked up mine as they will be given to someone to be reloaded (.45ACP) but there was so much other casings and shotgun shells (probably a 10 shell to 1 casing ratio, but we were in what was probably about 1/20th of the area, and there were thousands lying around. So this had me thinking about the economics of recycling these.

From what I have read so far is that with brass casings that some recycle places don't deal with them, other with primers removed (which I guess is just punching them out), and I should get somewhere near $1.70/LB. what about the condition of the brass? some look like they have some corrosion, will they only take "shiny" brass?

As for the shotgun shells, what is the best way to do this? separate the plastic (would that carry any value?) and what about the different types of metal they have (brass or steel I think)?

Just wondering if there is any money to be made in this. Thanks in advance guys.