Is it worth saving brass?

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My first handgun was an OM Blackhawk in .41 Magnum. Even in 1970, .41 Mag was expensive and hard to find, but the elderly gentleman who sold me the gun also included a double-cavity Lyman mold, bullet sizer, and set of reloading dies for it. This meant that I got to do lots of low-budget practice (the tire store used to give me 5-gallon buckets of wheelweight just for hauling them away.) Got to do lots of practice with that old pistol; in fact, I bought my first rifle with money from bets won shooting against rifles at 100 yards.

You don't really save any money by reloading, it simply enables you to shoot more for the same amount of money.
 
Local recycler told me $.88 a pound for scrap brass, including expended cases. I inevitably scrap a few each session - life is too short to shoot bad brass.
 
Simi-Off Topic Question, can you get the copper jackets for making your own FMJ Bullets?

I ask for 2 reasons,

1. I can get old Tire Weights for the cost of just hauling them off.
2. I've yet to see them in the reloading supplies in stores (newbie to reloading)

Thanks!
 
I have been saving it for a while now, and I have a few thousand .45s to load now. I also have plenty to look into .400 corbon dies and barrel.

One day at the indoor range at Impact, there was a guy with a full-auto Thompson next to me. He went through like four drum magazines. (I know, no fun at all.) I asked him during a brief moment of silence, if he was saving his brass. Hw told me to help myself. I guess if you can afford a Thompson and four drums of ammo, you have enough money to not worry about reloading. ;)

I also pick up the other common calibers, even if I don't shoot them, my friends do, and when I get all the way into reloading, for a while I will reload for them at cost, just for practice.
 
God uses brass to tell you His plans for you.

When I found a lot of .22 Hornet brass, I knew God wanted me to have a .22 Hornet.

When I found a lot of .45 ACP brass, I knew God wanted me to have an M1911.

When I found a lot of .45 Colt brass, I knew God wanted me to have a .45 Colt.

When I found a lot of 9mm brass, I knew the Devil was a deceiver.:p
 
The simple answer is....hell yes! I reload all my 40 S&W ammo and the brass case alone makes up about 10 cents of the cost of that ammo. So each peice of brass I don't pick up or lose, that's 10 cents down the drain. Multiply that by 1000, that's 100 bucks. The good news, I recover about 98% of the brass every shooting session, got about 3000 peices laying around.:D
 
I do all my shooting on my own property, so i try to get most of my spent casings up. That way there is less of a chance of getting a punctured tire on the tractor and having a horse with a casing stuck in its foot.

I will probably get into reloading sometime considering the cost of ammo these days. Im not sure what to do with all the steel stuff though. Does anyone here keep their steel to sell for scrap? Or is it even worth it?
 
Im not sure what to do with all the steel stuff though. Does anyone here keep their steel to sell for scrap? Or is it even worth it?
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Why not Reload it?
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Not a good idea to reload steel cases. I separate it from the brass and turn it in when I take the brass to scrap metal dealer. A full 5 gallon bucket of brass gets me ~$50 and a full bucket of steel cases gets me another $3-4 bucks. Free Money.
 
Zedicuz - I never really considered reloading any of it. Between two Mosins, an AK and a SKS, the majority of what i shoot is steel. I know its possible, but i figured it was just easier to sell for scrap.
 
i try to pick up brass whenever i can. steel on the other hand stays. i guess if you shoot a lot of steel cased rounds then it may be worth saving for the extra few bucks to cover some of the gas it took to get you to the scrapyard.
 
A friend collected all his 7.5x55 Privi Partisan boxer primed brass and offered it on Ebay (when they allowed it). He sold it for what he paid for the loaded ammo.

Even if you won't use it now you can always use it as trade goods or sell it outright.
 
There is a guy at the local gun show that will buy your brass (any) for 4 cents a pop! Think of it almost like a bag of nickels, I'd say it's worth it for that alone but I use all that I can get for reloading.
 
I got into reloading. The savings of the cost difference between factory ammo and reloads paid for the presses and equipment in the first year.
So I got into brass badgering this year...
Apart from being able to reload my own brass and not pay for cases, I was able to sell enough brass to pay for all the reloading supplies I used this year.

So, to recap, reloading paid for the press, brass scrounging paid for my supplies, so now I shoot for free (Except for paying for postage).

Oh wait, all that berdan brass and scrap brass and rimfires I pick up, sells for scrap brass and that pays for the postage.

Heck, I pick up .22 mags, .17 hmrs, etc because there is enough metal there to be worth picking up. 22LRs and such, if there is literally a pile there I can just sweep off of a tabletop into my bucket, sure, but I'm not picking up individual .22s!
 
Even if you don't reload it has scrap value.
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Its value to reloaders is much higher than its scrap value per pound. Save it in its original boxes, with all the same head stamp and you can sell it at gun shows for $5-15 per hundred depending on caliber and the brand of brass.

Brass buzzards at our range pick up what they can find, clean it, sort by caliber, and sell it with messages on the bulletin board for for ~$30/1000 (mixed brass that is not provably once fired is worth less). While some object to this, they do a service removing the .22lr empties (for scrap, all you can do with it) the price for their findings is reasonable if you don't care to pick up your own.

--wally.
 
I've been a chronic "hull whore" (to quote my wife) for years. In shotguns, I must have 30K empty shotshells in the basement. I also scrounge .45, .40, and 9mm pistol and .223 and 30-06 rifle.

I think that it's very interesting and telling that 10 years ago, I'd be the only one picking up brass. Now the only rifle brass left on the ground is Wolf steel case.
 
Would you pick up dimes if there were hundreds just lying around?

If you answered yes, than, I'd say it's worth it. If you are a millionaire, you might not want to bother.

Shooter429
 
saving brass?

The cost of brass goes keeps going up because of the demand -- we have two wars going on, and there is a huge building boom in China, so brass & copper and other metals are much in demand.

I save all the brass I can scrounge, sort it by caliber, and trade it even up for ammo to my local commercial reloader.

Most of the steel cased ammo has Berdan Primers and is not reloadable. Brass cases with Boxer Primers can be reloaded. Steel case ammo has scrap value, if your recycler will accept it.
 
Absolutely. Even if you don't reload, you can either sell the brass as is, or you can sell it as scrap for cash.

You'll find plenty of buyers either way today with the high cost of metals.
 
Someone on the first page said it wasnt worth the time/energy/profit to sort and clean range brass. It might not be, im not sure.

I, however, am a closet brass whore. When nobody is around on my range (because its embarassing to be seen doing so), I shamelessly root through range brass buckets and take home as much as I can carry. If its dirty, I wash it thoroughly in large batches in the sink. I dry them, sort by caliber, then remove all steel cases. Then I polish them in my tumbler. It doesnt matter that most of the brass I find I neither have firearms for nor reloading equipment... sooner or later I will, or I will have a friend who does, or a friend of a friend who wants to buy it, and worst case scenario I can scrap it for money.

Scrounging brass is as much of a hobby as reloading or shooting are, to me. :D
 
I, however, am a closet brass whore. When nobody is around on my range (because its embarassing to be seen doing so), I shamelessly root through range brass buckets and take home as much as I can carry.
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I came out of the closet long ago.

I not only go through the trash at ranges, if I drive past an abandoned quarry or similar place where people might shoot, I stop and look for brass.
 
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