Scrapping Nickel Items

I save nickel coins. This includes Canadian .999 nickels made up til 1981 and others from countries such as France and South Africa.

But I am a bit stumped when it comes to scrapping nickel from items such as furniture handles, locks and keys, etc. First, how can you tell something is indeed made of nickel instead of, say, zinc, which is much cheaper?

Do you find many scrap yards that even buy nickel?

Is there a simple way to test if something is made of nickel?

I'd love to hear whatever comments people have on this subject. Thanks in advance!

In my area, most scrap yards won't buy nickel as a commodity, but they will accept it mixed on the shred heap. That's probably, because they don't have enough volume to justify trading it. To get nickel prices, I would have to go to some specific large yards where they have ray guns and buy graded alloys (even if nickel is actually not an alloy).