I just bought about 4000 .38 special brass, 1000 were claimed to be clean, decapped and sized - 370 or so still had primers in them, 150 had CLAW (not extractor marks by someone using them in Model 52's) marks on the head, looks like someone used a vise grip on them.
The next 2000 were literally perfect in every way.
The other 1000 were not claimed cleaned or anything, but many had to be range pick ups at an outdoor range as there was mud, pebbles, crushed, split, beveled head etc... out of that lot, I was able to save like 350. The rest were scrap. LOL there were even lead and copper shards in with it, although there were 1012 cases in the lot.
I just pulled bullets on about 200 loaded .38 spl (mixed grains), the ammo came out of literally tons and tons of re-claimed brass from a farm. He claims the ammo and brass had to be about 60-70 years old. The bullets had ROCK hard wax/lube. Most but not all of the primers had a "U" stamped into the primer and they were copper colored, the powder had green flecks in it, we took it out back and laid the powder in a pie pan and ran a 15 ft fuse to it to burn it and get rid of it. Turned out to be a nice lil flash in the pan, super slow burn though. I buried the de-capped primers in a 1 foot deep hole under a rock in back of the garage. I am not sure what to do with the lead, maybe use it when I cast next.