My indoor range is willing to sell me unsorted brass for $2.50/lb. Good deal or not?

[duck911]

I suspect some of the brass will be unusable 22 brass but even they told me to expect a lot of 9mm, 40, and 45. Revolver calibers (357, 44 mag, etc will be less common.)

I can take unsorted brass off their hands for $2.50 a pound. They say that's the exact price they can get from their recycler, and what I can expect to sell the scrap I don't want.

I'll look into the price of brass scrap around here, but at a quick glance does this sound like a reasonable deal for stocking up on some brass and amking a buck or two selling some of the leftover?

thanks,

--Duck911

 

[hAkron]

my guess would be that you are going to have about 75 - 80% usable 9mm, a bit of 40 and 45, some (5%) .380, maybe some 38. The rest will be .22, odd ball stuff, and maybe some steel or aluminum (unless they have already sorted that out of the unsorted 'brass'). I shoot at ranges that don't mind when I scoop up a ziploc freezer bag or two full, but for $2.50 a pound I wouldn't feel cheated with those prices.

 

[heydawg]

Nobody can tell you if its a good deal since there's no information really to make that decision. If you don't reload, it's not a good deal. If you were hoping for .327 Federal cases, probably not a good deal. If you were hoping for 50 AE, probably not a good deal. If you wanted 9mm or 40 S&W, maybe a good deal.

Buy 20 pounds of it, sort it, and then figure out what you get percentage wise by weight in a spreadsheet and break it down to figure a cost per pound of usable extracting the broken, steel, crappy, stepped on, junk.

It might be worth buying and selling on Craigslist, or Gunbroker. And what you can't use, you can take to the recycler yourself.

 

[Lost Sheep]

Take one each 45 ACP, .40 S&W, 9mm (the most common you will find in your purchases, but if there are lots of others, include them, too) and weigh each one.

If you 72% of your purchases to be usable, or "keepers", perform this calculation:

For each caliber, figure out how many of each caliber will make a pound. Divide $2.50 by .72. Would you pay that much for that many cases (to re-sell or reload)?

Can you sell the rejects for enough to compensate for the handling tasks?

If the answer is "Yes" for all the above questions, then you are OK on the purchase side.

If you really can re-sell the good brass (after taking out the aluminum and steel) for that $2.50 / .72, then the only drawback is the cost of your time to sort, clean, transport, disposal of the rejects, etc.

If your answers are a mix of "Yes" and "No", you have to allocate the among the various calibers and rejects. This is more complex than I can describe right now.

If you go ahead, are you tied into a contract to take what they have for a specified length of time or can you try it for a month and see if it is worth the trouble? You probably wouldn't want to have the storage problem of 125,000 empty cartridges in your garage, either, even if it was profitable.

It sounds good to me. Don't let me discourage you. I just am talented at finding the potential for problems. Handy talent, sometimes.

Go forth and good luck.

Lost Sheep

 

[duck911]

Well, the good news is the range doesn't allow any steel or aluminum cases, so any brass will be BRASS. I can buy as little or as much as I like and there's no "contract". They also hinted to me that Thursday nights are 45 ACP nights (league...). Unfortunately, I don't shoot a 45 currently, but when sorted it may sell well enough to offset my costs and make my other brass free.

Anyhow, for the 40, 9mm, and oddball 45, .357. and 44, I may give it a shot just for fun. I'm not really looking to make a profit (my time is frankly more valuable that making a buck per pound after sorting) but some reasonably cheap brass in bulk would be nice

thanks,

--Duck911

 

[W.E.G.]

Unless you like reloading 9mm, it doesn't sound too appealing.

I can buy loaded 9mm for little more than it costs to reload the stuff with a jacketed bullet.

 

[1SOW]

I can take unsorted brass off their hands for $2.50 a pound

The scrap yard gave me around a $1.80/# for my culls and calibers I don't use.

If you can get enough "useful-to-you" brass per bag, it doesn't sound bad. Try one and see..

Maybe I'm blessed with range pistol brass. I've never bought any 9mm brass and shoot 250-ish reloads/week for years. 40 cal is also plentiful as range pick-ups. 45 acp is not.

 

[Bush Pilot]

Unless you want to spend your free time screwing around with trying to sort/clean/sell brass I'd pass. Find a source of once fired brass for your own use and forget the other stuff, I doubt you'd make enough to make it pay.

 

[Deavis]

Cartridge brass here is under $2 a pound and if you look hard you can find deals for already sorted brass for just a little over that price in 9 and 40. The only thing that would make it worthwhile would be the 45ACP cases, but the time you'll invest sorting that brass to get them is simply not worth the dollars you "save" by buying it from a range.

 

[Otto]

You can calculate how much you're paying for brass per thousand.
Example: there's 8.5 pounds of 9mm per 1000 pieces. $2.50 X 8.5lbs = $21.50 per 1000 pieces of 9mm.
IMO, that's not a very good return on your investment. However, some calibers like 45ACP are more valuable.

Here's the weights of some common brass:

38spl, 9.7#/1000

40s&w, 10#/1000

.357mag, 11.2#/1000

.45acp, 12.8#/1000

 

[RhinoDefense]

I would never pay that much for fired, unsorted brass.

 

[ReloaderFred]

The scrap price for yellow brass is falling. A month ago, I was getting $2.27 a pound, and this month I got $1.97 a pound. The market goes up and down, sometimes on a daily basis. Unless they've got some sweet deal, they're not getting $2.50 a pound for their brass at a scrap yard.

Hope this helps.

Fred

 

[evan price]

I'm paying no more than $2 a pound for range brass, and that's stuff with no rimfires aluminum or steel cases mixed in. $2.50 per pound would be a no-deal for me. The service I offer firing ranges is that I pay what the smelter pays, but they don't have to transport it themselves.

 

[kingmt]

I wouldn't give that for pistol brass. If it was rifle that I had use for & could take them back the junk.

 

[duck911]

Thanks guys - it looks like I will ass on the brass. tha nks for the feedback!

--Duck911

 

[RustyFN]

I can buy loaded 9mm for little more than it costs to reload the stuff with a jacketed bullet.

Wow where are you buying factory 9mm for $7 per 100 rounds?

 

[1SOW]

RustyFN:

Wow where are you buying factory 9mm for $7 per 100 rounds?

Amen.

My 125gr JHP loads cost me 6$/50, but I'll bet he's not shooting these with Fed primers at 132PF!

 

[kingmt]

I still shoot some of the federal but I tried some in my duty gun which is a glock & I though I would never get the lead out of it.

 

[45_auto]

Wow where are you buying factory 9mm for $7 per 100 rounds?

Where are you buying 9mm FMJ bullets for less than $50 per 1000 bullets?

We'll figure you get free electricity and supplies for cleaning brass, etc.

Cheap primers = $15/1000 = 1.5 cents each
4 grains of powder at $15/pound = .5 cents each

That means your FMJ bullets have to cost less than 5 cents each.

Cheapest 9mm 115 grain FMJ bullets I've seen lately is around $70/1000, makes them 7 cents each.

 

[ferggie]

$30 / 1000 45acp

I pay $30/1000 for sorted (only brass) 45 ACP from the indoor range. Like myself the reloaders will collect their brass as the fire it so you can bet that verry little of the brass has been shot more then once.

 

[beatledog7]

Ask around, be a nice guy at the range, and good things happen. A buddy at my range has access to a military range and brought me 500 mostly PMC 9mm for free.

 

[RustyFN]

Where are you buying 9mm FMJ bullets for less than $50 per 1000 bullets?

Zero bullets, I still have a few thousand on the shelf.

Cheap primers = $15/1000 = 1.5 cents each

Yes and I still have thousands of them.

4 grains of powder at $15/pound = .5 cents each

Yes, I am loading 5 grains with $12 powder or .8 cents per round.

Cheapest 9mm 115 grain FMJ bullets I've seen lately is around $70/1000, makes them 7 cents each.

That would still let you load for less than $9 per 100. Last I saw WWB 100 pack goes for close to $20 and it's garbage compared to what anybody can load. It all comes down to how much 9mm you shoot to see if it's worth your time or not. Personally my mindset is if I shoot it and it can be reloaded then I reload it.

 

[Fishslayer]

Anyhow, for the 40, 9mm, and oddball 45, .357. and 44, I may give it a shot just for fun. I'm not really looking to make a profit (my time is frankly more valuable that making a buck per pound after sorting) but some reasonably cheap brass in bulk would be nice

If I was going to be sorting in any sort of bulk I would buy one of these.

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/84...m-luger-40-smith-and-wesson-45-acp-3-bowl-set

When I was starting out I bought some fired brass on the Castboolits swap & sell board. You could have a look there & see what it's going for these days.

.357 Magnum brass is always gold!