Is it worth saving brass?

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Nightwing

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I mean.... 9mm and.40 or .45? Is it worth it?
have had guys tell me to save ALL BRASS and sell it, but.... is it really worth it?
I don't know much about it so any info would be cool.
Would have posted this in reloading, but thought it was more of a general discussion thing
 
unless you have 'dds' on you license plate, you probably cant afford to buy as much ammo as you would like to shoot. So if you are not now, as a great many of us here are, handloading.....chance favors that you will in the future. having brass already will save you hundreds per caliber than. or sell it. get ua a free tank of gas once in a while.
 
It's worth saving if you are going to use it for something (reload, recycle, whatever) ... if it's just going to wind up in bags in your closet don't bother.

Ranges all recycle brass. Many send it off to bulk reloaders, some have automatic reloading equipment of their own. That's why so many ranges try to grab onto any and all brass they can. It can vary from "you can take as much brass as you brought -- if you fired 100 9mm you can take 100 9mm shells off the floor no matter where they actually came from" to "if it touches the floor it's ours," but in every case they'd really rather you left it because it's money to them.
 
I started saving brass long before I started reloading. I saved .45 ACP brass when I was in the service 35 yrs. ago and I am still working from that casche. That said, I don't know if I should save 9mm brass because loaded ammo costs only very slightly more than I can reload it for.
 
Some ranges sell it to reloaders some sell it for scrap some toss it in the dumpster.
 
Mark the bottoms of your rounds while they are still in the box. Pick them up and svae them. When you have a couple hundred, start reloading. Take a few minutes and do a search for new brass. It isn't cheap. If you leave it at the range, all your doing is paying extra.
 
It's definitely not worthwhile to save and recycle brass. Because I am such a nice guy however, I will be happy to dispose of yours for you :)
 
Clarification of Terms

I guess I'll start saving the brass. Neve considered reloading untill now with the price of bullets jumping thru the roof.
Click to expand...
Bullet: The projectile fired from a handgun or rifle, usually made entirely of lead or of lead with some sort of copper-alloy jacket or copper plating.

Brass: In this context, the cartidge case, which is ejected automatically from an autoloading firearm and manually from revolvers and rifles that have a manual operation system (e.g., bolt action, lever-action, single shot, etc.)

Cartridge: The entire package of a cartridge case, primer, powder and bullet.

Due to soaring prices of base metals, such as lead and copper, cartridge prices have been "jumping thru the roof" but so have prices of their components, such as the bullets and cartridge cases. The situation has been exacerbated by enhanced military demand for ammunition.
 
Heck, I even recycle surplus copper washed steel cases. I took a box of this stuff (about 30 lbs) and got $30 for it at a scrap metal place. Brass cases would bring quite a bit more.
 
$30....They must not have known the difference between brass and copper washed. :eek:
 
I keep .45 ACP, .38 Spl, .357 Mag, .44 Mag, .223/.5.56NATO, .308Win/7.62NATO and 30-06 Spgfld. I leave the rimfire and 9MM, although with the price of copper being what it is I may start saving 9MM too.
 
probably not advised to pick up the brass soon after ejection? :eek:

scraping metal is something i just got into. we had a big windstorm here in western washington that tore and mangled a bunch of our aluminum barn roofs. i cut it to 8' lengths, stacked about 15 pieces in my truck and got about $70! no wonder people are always after it...
 
I have bought once fired brass for reloading and the going rate is about 1.5 cents per, in lots of 1000 with matching head stamps. The odd range brass that ends up in my brass bag gets sorted out and set to the recycler, the last box of brass I took down I got about 100.00 dollars for, so ya pick it up.
 
Re: Is it worth saving brass.

Good question. I started shooting and handloading simultaneously; the cost differential was significant at the time. I have been a compulsive brass picker ever since and even justified, to my self, the purchase of a Beretta 92s when I noticed a thousand empties had accumulated. If I could use it, it went into the cache; if I couldn’t it was set aside for trade. Last year I looked at selling the stuff on ebay, check the prices on closed auctions; the work involved in sorting, cleaning and bagging is more than the profit from the effort. I then started giving it to shooting buddies who in turn gave what I could use that they couldn’t. I now have more rifle brass than I will ever be able to use, back to square one.

In pistol calibers, I can get a significant savings by using lead slugs and “free” brass; even compared to Blazer and WWB. Since my loading equipment is older than some of my shooting buddies, the investment has long been paid off in spite of some upgrades over the last three years. Premium jacketed slugs will narrow the savings until you price the factory stuff. Some guys count their time as a cost, if you do there is no savings at all and no reason to handload. As always, YMMV.

Da Bianhua
}:)>
 
That said, I don't know if I should save 9mm brass because loaded ammo costs only very slightly more than I can reload it for.
Click to expand...

I used to think the same thing about 5.56. Now heavier grain 5.56 ( > 55gr ) is generally $.50 / round shipped, even buying bulk. And now I'm KICKING myself for all the radway and lake city I left laying on ranges a few years ago.

Fortunately, I've always saved .45 and .308, regardless of market price. And I've started saving 9mm. WWB still keeps 9mm cheap enough that it's not really economical today. But looking at the trends, you have to wonder how long that'll last.
 
Heck, I even recycle surplus copper washed steel cases. I took a box of this stuff (about 30 lbs) and got $30 for it at a scrap metal place. Brass cases would bring quite a bit more.
Click to expand...
They gave you brass price. If they gave you steel price, assuming they gave you the high steel price, that 30 dollars would have been a buck fifty.
 
The range that I frequented in my mis-spent youth (early in the morning) had a problem. The local military shooters would just leave their Match 30-06 and Match 7.62 brass laying in the dirt. They would police the boxes with lot numbers intact and toss them in the trash.

Naturally being the polite and public spirited young man that I used to be, I would pick up the fired cases and restore them to the correct boxes and haul them off so that the other members didn't have to make the effort to dispose of this unsightly mess!:rolleyes:

Why upon occasion I even helped in the cleanup of lesser brass such as '06 & 7.62 ball brass and the various 30-30 and assorted 357, 38 special, and 44 mag brass I found scattered about. Purely being an upstanding citizen, I assure you.
 
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