You need to talk to your different yards and see what they do. I have a yard that takes anything power cord or romex (up to 16 gauge I think) as insulated #1. I only have to cut the ends off. Anything else, such as computer wire (sata cables, ribbon cables, printer/monitor/network cables) all go as #2 insulated, and I don't have to cut the ends off. This includes telephone wire. The only "wire" they don't take is coax. However, another yard down the road looks at computer wire and doesn't have a clue how to grade it, despite my efforts to educate. I would take a sampling of wire and ask each yard around you how they grade it. I was getting $1.05 for #2, but that has since dropped to about $0.75. Hope this helps.