Wasted $

What have you thrown away before you thought of scrapping, or before you knew what to separate?

Some sort of aluminum dolly or something with 2 wheels and a handle
Bikes and parts
Spare truck wheel: rim and tire
Computers and dryers I scrapped as shred

Things that are too big to fit in a car are acceptable losses, but the smaller items and probably some other stuff I don't remember now add up to some significant $. I started scrapping when I didn't have time for research, but afterwards I still made some lazy or impatient mistakes that cost me.

A complete 4-cylinder motor. Before I knew to sell it to the scrap yard, I took it there to get it out of my way - it had been left by the previous landowner. I'd driven by the scales and the yard guy asked if I wanted to get paid for it. I said "No, I just want to get rid of it". Dropped it on the ground and left.

For years I used to "recycle" metal as something to do in my spare time when I wasn't at work...the "recycle" yards would "LET" me drop my metals off in their pile...Never once did they suggest I run it over the scale first...Then I moved and found out shortly after that you can sell it.

I hate those guys now haha.

Cat converter, 2 engine blocks, cast alum, brake rotors/drums...all sold as shred before I knew how to separate...

Too many items to list, but one always comes to mind. When I first started scrapping I would brake down electronics and throw away the wires thinking they were aluminum till another scrapper came by one day and showed me that they were copper. Must have thrown away 30 or 40 lbs.

For 2 years i kept tossing tv boards as mix I even burned some . giving in motors before i learned how to dismantle, selling my brass plumbing valves that now I see selling on ebay for lots of $$ i wish i just saved it selling lots of cu pipes as #2 should have been #1 they got me.Put computers to curb years ago and they sure disappeared I remember saying to my self WHY ? there XT ATs so old a 50 pound power painter times 2 and CU gutters i gave to my land lord like take it's OK.

I cleaned up the house I currently live in and had tons of scrap years ago. I took down a 40ft antennae as well as lots of extrusion. I got to the yard and had no clue what to do pulled up on what looked like a scale, no one approached me the entire time so I unloaded everything right there and left...

I put every appliance in a house on the curb....

i guess the worst mistake i ever made was not following you fellas around!

I've done non ferrous for years here and there. But when it came to the big stuff I didn't have the proper vehicle. I gave away a fridge, a washer, bedframes, bathtubs, TVs and Alotta other stuff. I knew it was all worth something, just didn't seem worth my time. I've done well for my first year of running ferrous. My ferrous has paid for my truck my trailer and my gas since I seriously started in Jan.

I was power washing and sealing my mothers deck the other day and she says "oh! I have some scrap for you!"

She grabs 4 soup cans and hands them to me with a big smile on her face. I shrug, take them, and say "thanks, mom"

Then we start talking about it, and the day before she had payed someone to haul off her broken dehumidifier. I almost flipped... But then remember that she just doesn't know. And she saved me the cans, so she tries.

Filthy, thats actually really sweet...my mom reluctantly picks stuff up for me, or tells me when theirs stuff in their area...she likes to give me a (very) hard time about my hobby, I dont think she realizes how long ive really been junk picking, and I dont plan to stop, and deep inside it bugs her.

Glad im young n have the internet(you guys n gals) to guide me..after i stripped $ 500 worth of copper wire a couple years ago, i instantly began brainstorming what items contained copper..i did throw away some steel when i first started but nothing else..long live SMF! thx everyone

Before I knew anything about E-waste, every computer I came across I would scrap the frame, aluminum heat sinks and wire, and toss the rest.
Looking back on it, I cringe at how much I unknowingly discarded and how much cash I could have made by all those boards I threw out.

Unbelievable.

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Originally Posted by BuckStacyBuck

Before I knew anything about E-waste, every computer I came across I would scrap the frame, aluminum heat sinks and wire, and toss the rest.
Looking back on it, I cringe at how much I unknowingly discarded and how much cash I could have made by all those boards I threw out.

Unbelievable.

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Same here..Shred is better than trash price though to the unknowning!

I scrapped several hundred older computers, servers etc. At that time the scrapyard made sure there were no boards in them before you unloaded, since they were classed as toxic waste. I was needing to clean up this mess before I moved, and broke it down as best I could. The steel I could take across the scales, the plastic I could hide in heavy duty garbage bags and drop it off at the city waste site (thanks to a suggestion from someone who talked on the phone there), a few monitors went into my landlady's dumpster at their jobsite (when there was room left), but a daunting pile of motherboards seemed to be unwanted anywhere, and I didn't want to be the culprit of abandoning toxic waste! Finally talked to a computer recycling place there in town, who would be so kind as to let me drop off these gold laden jewels for free! Which I did, a lil Ford pick-up truck bed nearly full. Oh Well!

Before I started scrapping my friends and I would go shooting all the time and we would shoot anything. We shoot up tvs, computers, water heaters, just to name a few things. looking back on that I am thankful we did this at my friends farm. Another lost moment happened last year. I brought in a trailor full of steel fence posts. They ended up giving me like 75 dollars less because it wasn't cut down to size. I was new. I know now and cut my fence posts.

I only used to throw away ferrous, non ferrous, e-waste, cardboard, paper, and plastic. I mean ....it's just garbage right!!! Wouldn't want to think of the money I threw before I knew!!!

A few years back husband hired two friends to put new siding on the house, they tore off the old aluminum and piled it in a mountain in the yard. 2 months after staring at it sitting in the yard he gave it all to the first scrapper that came along, a bunch of old copper plumbing went to same way.

He kept telling me he was going to borrow his dad's truck and all I had was a VW Golf...

...thinking if I had only known what I do now, I would have crammed it in the Golf when he was working and started hauling. lol

Kid was a baby back then, could have used the money, but was alot younger then...and ALOT dumber. ;)

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...thinking if I had only known what I do now, I would have crammed it in the Golf when he was working and started hauling. lol
Kid was a baby back then, could have used the money, but was alot younger then...and ALOT dumber.

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Like Miked says, "you don't know what you don't know",,,

Shucks....! I may not think of everything but here are the top 5 that I can think of:

1. I once tore down a 10x20 aluminum storage shed. They asked me if taking it away was included in my price. It wasn't but I sucked it up and agreed to take it. I snuck it into my apartment complex dumpster late at night. The next day I brought out some trash to cover it up so the management wouldn't notice. Someone had already taken it. I didn't think anything of it. But now I know why it was gone.

2. My parents had their A/C compressor replaced. The old one sat on their back patio for 4 months so they asked me to get rid of it. I called the local municipality to have them haul it away. I put it on the curb and someone took it before the trash truck could get there. I had no idea that the aluminum fin/copper coil material had any value.

3. Another project at my parents' house- I cleaned out their garage. My dad used to finish basements so had accumulated several sticks of copper piping, copper fittings, brass valves, appliances, etc. He said I could give the stuff away to anyone who wanted it. I placed a Craigslist ad and the first guy that showed up just wanted the copper and brass. I thought it was because the guy was a plumber. But he wasn't interested in the other plumbing supplies.

4. COMPUTERS! Many years ago I had about 60 desktops. They were 386 and 486 machines that were in the BIG tower cases. My buddy got the whole lot from a GSA auction for $10. We had this big idea that we would fix them and sell them. After realizing that the government had a good reason for selling them, we realized that we couldn't make any money off of them. The local neighborhood crackhead saw us putting them on the curb. He offered to call his buddy to haul them away for us for $30. We jumped on the deal. Later we found out that his "buddy" was a scrap metal recycler.

5. Aluminum wheels - I had a BMW that got wrecked by some teenagers who rear ended me. I got a check from their insurance company then I bought the car back for $100. I managed to make money on salvaging the good parts. But when I called the junk man, he asked me if I wanted anything else off of the car before he took it. He gave me $150 for the car but I probably could have gotten double that for the wheels alone.

I have been scraping for 6 years. I work in commercial roofing and get quite a bit of scrap from my projects. For years, I just watched the scrap sheet metal go in the dumpster and landfill. Now I scrap all the metal from the roof. We often remove old HVAC units and ones that have previously been vandalized (pretty often), redeck the hole, and roof like it was never there. I used to break the HVAC units down and separate the coils and copper but leave the compressors and electric motors in the shred loads. I probably took over 100 motors in the shred scrap before I realized they had good value by themselves. Then when I did start taking them in, I took it to a guy who paid about $0.10 less than other yards before I figured everything out. I finally started piling them up until I had a trailer load of them and take them in twice a year or so to a good buyer.

My refined method is sort and separate everything before getting more scrap and running out of storage space. I may lose some easy pickings, but I hope I will maximize the value of the labor I do.