Bulk Brass Purchasing Question???

Umm, I just weighed 25 fired and deprimed 223 cases.

149 grams
.328 lbs
5.25 ounces.

So I don't think that 25 223 cases = 1 pound.

I doubt if 25 primers weigh 10 ounces.

so which government auction sites did you see this on?

The prices are usually pretty high on government auctions for fired brass because the lots are so large. I've seen them that were over 10,000 pounds of brass.

By the way, the current prices for scrap brass are so low, the local scrap dealer won't even buy it. He tells customers to hold onto it until the price goes back up. The last time I checked, which was last month, they were paying .15 cents a pound for yellow brass, if you could get them to take it.

Hope this helps.

Fred

For the most part, the bidders on those large lots of brass aren't bidding on the scrap value. They're looking at the investment, and return, on reselling the once fired cases, which will bring much more than scrap value.

For instance, I'm seeing .40 S&W brass selling for as much as $40.00 per thousand, but the scrap value is only about $1.65, give or take a few cents. It's the value of the finished product they're bidding on.

Right now, once fired .223 brass is going for roughly $100.00 per thousand, plus shipping, if you can find it. The scrap value is roughly $2.10 per thousand. That's why they're bidding so high.

Hope this helps.

Fred

Right now today I am getting $.55 a pound for scrap yellow brass at the foundry. That's down from $2.10 a pound this time last year and up a nickle from last month. Word I hear is that the only reason it is so high is because of demand for ammo otherwise it would be down around $.20 a pound.

The thing to remember about the DRMO auctions is that there is often a lot of .50 cal mixed in and that stuff is several dollars per case.

Plus .308 is going for a quarter a case sometimes. Commercial reloaders buy the stuff in bulk for ammo, if they can't get it they don't sell reloaded bulk ammo.

I've bid on and won several auctions for brass but anymore with the time involved in sorting & cleaning & inspecting & shipping it is best left to the big dogs. I've seen 22K# of it at one time.

The largest lot I bought was 4700# of mixed small arms brass and it still had steel ammo belt links, shotgun shells, garbage, old hardware, wooden slats, gravel, etc. mixed in.

PLUS, the Dempsey-dumpsters it was stored in didn't come with the sale so we had to come out with totes and shovel it all into our totes to get it off of the base. No forklift. No power equipment. Dirty job.

Evan, about how much did you pay for the brass and what did you bid and win on? I'm just curious to know how small those kind of auctions can get.

And no one has said anything about the $10,000 deposit that's on most, if not all mil auctions.
Borg