Selling junk brass

[Herk30]

As I was sorting through a bunch of range brass I picked up I was wondering if guys bother depriming the junk casings or just take them in the way they are? I wasn't sure what primers are actually constructed of.


btw, I was picking up another bag of range brass today and found four .223, 2 .45, and numerous 9mm rounds all laying within the brass. Guys must have dropped them refilling their mags or clearing a jamb.

 

[Smokey Joe]

Junk brass...

Herc 30--Good questions!

Pistol and rifle primers are all-brass. Don't deprime scrap brass; it is a waste of time. The spent primers, IN the cases, are just a little more weight of brass. FWIW, I'm saving up my removed primers from cases I'm resizing to reload--takes a Loooong time to accumulate any decent weight of 'em, but eventually they'll go to the scrap dealer along w/my junked cases, and I expect to be paid the same for 'em. The market for scrap brass is up, up, up right now, thanx to the Chinese demand for metals.

If I understand correctly, shotgun primers have steel in 'em, therefore are worthless as scrap brass, also as scrap steel. But I don't reload enough shotgun ammo to have the primers-as-scrap question matter to me, so haven't checked.

On live rounds found on the ground: I find a whole round or 2 every time I go to the range. Usually .22 rimfire, but not always. Sometimes the rounds have a firing pin dent (therefore are duds) and sometimes not (therefore are "drops," as the battlefield archaeologists call never-fired munitions they find.) Once in a while, one of the drops will have a mutilated bullet nose, indicating that it was a victim of a jam, but most were just dropped.

I used to fire off the live rounds if they fit my gun, just to deactivate them as a public service. Then I considered the danger of mis-loaded reloads, and stopped that practice. The gun club to which I belong has locked "dud cans" at each range, so now I just deposit all found ammo there. What the club does with it I do not know.

Most ranges will have some procedure for dealing with live-but-unusable ammo, but the practices differ.

 

[Seafarer12]

It would depend on the scrap yard and the price difference between clean and dirty brass. I am not sure what scrap yards would say about nickel cases or primers. If they would take it all as brass I wouldn't mess with it. If they cut your price in half because it was dirty then I would think about it depending on how much scrap we were talking about.

I remember one time I went to the scrap yard and had an old aluminum rim. They were doing to give me dirty aluminum price because it still have the valve stem in it. I pulled out my knife and cut it off then they gave me the clean price.

 

[Herk30]

Thanks fellas

 

[Eb1]

I wonder if the Chinese are reloading our range brass for some reason?

 

[layusn1]

My scrap yard REFUSES to take anything with a primer in it. I would say call the one you intend on taking it to and check what their policies are. A 5 gal bucket full of various calibers yields me around $75.

 

[Smokey Joe]

Reloading range brass...

EB1--Interesting idea! Hadn't thought of it.

Actually, China is trying as hard as it can to become a first-world power, instead of 2nd- or 3rd-world. To this end, they are electrifying the whole country, and this of course requires massive amounts of copper for transmission wires and dynamos. Not to mention the copper componentry of all the electronic doo-dads China turns out.

Shooters' brass, as the scrap trade calls it, is a very small portion of the total. It gets mixed in with all the other brass and copper scrap, and smelted for the copper along with everything else, I expect.

Personally, my scrap brass consists largely of cases damaged 1 way or another, or A-Merc cases I won't touch. The rest is mostly range pick-ups that are too corroded or dirty. The Chinese would have a heck of a time sorting through this for reloadable cases, even if it were separate from all the other brass scrap.

 

[ReloaderFred]

I sell brass to three different scrap yards, depending on the price they're offering at the time. None of the three requires primers to be removed. Most will look at the coffee can of spent primers I take in and then after passing a magnet through them, mix them in with the rest of the brass. I took in my last load about a month ago and received $1.95 a pound for it, which was enough to buy a new MEC 9000GN loader, and had some change to spare.

They also took my spent shotgun primers and gave me about .15 cents a pound for them, as I had two and half coffee cans full. The Aluminum Blazer cases were bought at sheet aluminum price for .65 cents a pound. They also took all the steel Wolf cases I had at the same .15 cents a pound as the shotgun primers. They mixed them together when they weighed them. I don't throw anything away!

A lot of effort and energy goes into producing those products and I hate to see any of it wasted. I make a few dollars out of it and it helps pay for my obsession.

Hope this helps.

Fred

 

[RustyFN]

From what I have heard most scrap places won't take brass with primers in. They will take brass without primers and the primers seperate in a bucket. I know it doesn't make sence to me either but that's how a lot of them are. I have heard of people getting around $35 for a one gallon paint can full of primers.
Rusty

 

[rhubarb]

I catch spent primers coming out of my press with my scrap brass bucket. The fellows at the recycling place don't bat an eye.

 

[armoredman]

Hmm, gotta stop throwing those spent primers out. I do have a 5 pound coffee can full of bad brass, and the local recycler told me he'll take firearm brass, no problem.

 

[Herk30]

The way I look at it, every little bit helps the habit.

 

[jenrob]

I took a yard rake out to an old shooting spot that had a lot of 22lr cases. I was just raking it to make a clear spot for a few of us to shoot so we could retrieve the brass easier. Then after thought was hey that pile is worth a good few pounds of powder some bullets and primers.

So now after I collect my brass I clean up every body elses litter and recycle it.

Helps keep that area clean and also do the same a the outdoor range.