New to scrapping...... have one basic question:

Hi all...... I was thrilled to find this forum, and thanks to all in advance for any help provided.

I recently discovered the benefits of scrapping when I was down on my luck financially, and made quite a large chunk of change by hauling in about a year's worth of can's.... the money couldn't have come at a better time.

Now, I have no real intent of becoming super serious, or attempting to make a full time living out of this, but, the general concensus that I continue to run into, is that "if it's metal, it's worth money"...... so just how accurate is that?

The reason I'm asking, is that over this weekend, I've done some house renovation, cleaning, etc....... and I've discovered a huge amount of old grills, chairs, aluminum fencing, old signs, and just all sort's of other things that were once buried in my basement. Will scrap yards take things such as that???

If so, I'm hoping for another potentially good pay off, rather than just throwing all of this stuff out.

So again, if it's metal, it's worth money? or is that not always the case?

Metal is always worth money.

Basic way to start is to grab a magnet and separate the piles into ferrous vs. nonferrous. Ferrous material is anything a magnet will stick to. Granted you have to have a large pile of ferrous metal to make it worth your trip but the beauty is ferrous metal is easy to acccumulate and doesn't require a lot of separation or preparation.

As for the other materials, I would separate them by type (chairs, grills, fencing, etc etc) then run a quick search on the forums here to see how to break them down. There is a lot of good information here which can help your overall return.


Cheers.
Tom

Thank you so very much Tom, I will definately follow your advice to research this forum. Thanks again!

Follow what tyoon has suggested. One term you should learn is "clean" vs "dirty". An example of "dirty" would be your aluminum chairs with steel rivets. Remove the steel rivets you have "clean" aluminum. The "dirty" price is far lower than the "clean" because some where up the chain someone has to seperate the steel from the aluminum.

Much more info in the old threads, and welcome to the forum, Mike.

And out on the main page is the site called Scrap Monster, check them out for sample prices. If your grills are gas then you might have brass valves and maybe cast alum. lids. Your bigger prices will come from copper wire and alum. cast and/or what they call "old sheet".

I posted this the other day but it seems appropriate for your question, the other day I was trying to throw away 2 dentist chairs at my local trash dumpster but myself and an older gentleman who works there had such a hard time removing them from the back of a Tahoe so the older guy suggested I take them to the scrap yard(as many cars as I scrap I can't believe I didn't think of it) but anyway I wound up getting $96 for the 2 dentist chairs because they weighed in at 800lbs at .12 per lb.

Mechanic688... thank you so much, will most certainly have a look at that site....... and Ptscrapper..... I'm starting to really admire stories such as yours...... simply because even though $96.00 isn't going to make you rich..... you made it off of something you didn't buy in the first place, at least I assume you didn't..... and if it's going to be thrown away in the first place, why not make a buck or two for it. I'm really starting to like this as a side project...... I plan on continuing to study the pro's here on this forum, and perhaps I will get better as I go along. Luckily for me, the two guy's that I deal with at my local yard, are super friendly, and always helpful, so combine that, with this forum, and I think it's a win :) Thanks again for all of the help so far!

I started out by taking things apart and asking a lot of questions when I went to the scrap yard. You can max. your money by taking things apart and selling the metals separatly. The hardest thing to learn is the diffrant metals, most scrap yards will help you out with that and also this forum is a source, so keep reading. HO and welcome to the forum.

Read n read some more...its made me cash n can work for ya too..gl man

All metals are indeed worth $$ its just some are more valuable than others, just my 2 cents worth