Recycling metals for cash?

[mickey'sbud]

Anyone ever take your household metals and get cash for them? If so how did you do ($$$) ? Examples of items I'm curious about are

Grills
Computers - electronics
Christmas tree lights, old electrical cords
Wheel barrel, tools

Thanks in advance.

 

[mickey'sbud]

I specifically mean selling these items for scrap.

 

[powellrj]

The only one I know is that my parents just had to PAY $2.00 to recycle their old computer and monitor.

 

[wiigirl]

Electronics usually have to pay or sometimes you can find a place to take them for free.

We had a bunch of plumbing done and had a bunch of copper pipe we removed. My DH took it to a place and I think we got around $4/lb....

 

[Narnia_girl]

We wait until our county has a specific day for electronics and recycle them on those days.

We usually cash in (recycle) our aluminum cans and let our son have that money.

We have sold a couple of large items for scrap--most recently our water heater. You go to a local scrap place with the item in your vehicle and they weigh the van/truck. Then they show you where to dump the item and they weigh the vehicle again. The difference in weight is multiplied by whatever they are paying and they give you that money. I think our water heater netted us $10 or so but that is better than having to pay someone to haul it off.
We will probably do our old gas grill as we just bought a new one.

For Christmas lights, Home Depot or Lowe's usually has an event in the early winter where you can trade in old styles for new LED styles and get so much off your purchase.

 

[ceecee]

We had to pay to get ours removed! Water heater and TVs, etc. My friends son took in several old washers but he hardly got enough $ to pay for the gas it took to pick them up and take them there. Home depot had $2 off Christmas lights when you took an old one in. We took our old ones, but the LED sets we found cheaper at Target.

 

[BCV2003]

When we took down our pool we took all of the aluminum in and made about 600. For everything else that is random metal items, we take it to my future FIL's and he waits until he has a whole load to take in.

 

[Jeff_G]

Sure, I recycle aluminum cans, once I get a big trash bag full I get around $10 -$20 for them. Copper and brass will fetch some good dollars.

One item we have a hard time with is cardboard. Its bulky takes up a lot of space and very few places seem to take it in my area.

I am currently awaiting my trash company to offer single stream recycling service.

Electronics you usually have to pay someone for it. I have a dead microwave sitting in my garage that I dont want to pay $10 to recycle it so I'm going to wait for a community recycle day.

 

[Colleen27]

Monitors and certain other electronics won't be accepted - they have to be specially recycled because of their mercury content.

We do sell rather a lot of scrap because of the work DH does and I don't think it would be worth doing for the typical household. It takes a lot of weight to add up to any real money, so unless you live close to the scrapyard it might end up costing more in gas than you'd get for the scrap. That said, if you have a lot it does add up. DH has had jobs where he had over a hundred bucks in scrap aluminum from replacing siding, and we got a few hundred dollars for our boiler, pipes, and the radiators that weren't in good enough shape to sell as vintage/antique.

 

[Disneefun]

Around here, anything that's straight up metal (lawn mower, wheel barrow, cans, metal tools, etc.) you can take to the metal place, they weigh it, and give you the money.

The only way to get the money for the metal in electronics and electrical cords is if you strip it out yourself and add it to your metal pile. They won't pay you (or even take the stuff) if they have to do the stripping.

Otherwise, you can take your electronics to be recycled at places like Best Buy or the municipal recycling place. You won't get paid in these cases, but they are free, at least.

 

[Anthony1971]

unless you have aluminum or bare cooper... as these are worth the most...
cooper being the $$ in the 2-3 a pound range.
Steel will get you maybe 10-11 per 100 pounds.
if you have a lot of wrapped wire it is also worth it...
check the internet for local palces and they will list the prices paid..
please note the do round off weight in thier favor.

 

[LJSquishy]

It's usually not worth your time or gas to scrap items unless you are doing a home remodel, etc.

We just had almost our entire house's plumbing redone (we live in a small 1905 home in a historical district) and only got $30 for the old copper & galvanized pipe. There wasn't a ton of it, but it was only enough to pay for the gas in the truck to take it to the scrap yard & also make one trip to the dump. So, for us it was worth it to pay for the gas/dump run, but otherwise we wouldn't have done it.

 

[Earstou]

Dell has a program through Goodwill for recycling computers, but it's a donation, you won't get paid anything.

Check here for participating Goodwills:
http://dellreconnect.com/

 

[mickey'sbud]

unless you have aluminum or bare cooper... as these are worth the most...
cooper being the $$ in the 2-3 a pound range...
if you have a lot of wrapped wire it is also worth it.

Do you mean stripping the wire (cords) or take them in as is?

 

[hamellr]

I just recently had a project at work where I had to recycle a large amount of metal at different locations around the country and learned a few things in the project. First, prices vary by region of the country, AND also by fluctuations in the metals market.

Copper and Aluminum are the most desired. Steel is the least desired. Copper needs to be bare wire or you get Steel prices. Steel needs to be unpainted or you get a reduced price. If you do not sort the metals, you get steel prices.

If you're lucky a recycler will give you about half of the current metal prices, most give about 1/3rd. I was recycling 600 pounds of Steel (including large solid metal plates,) 300 pounds of aluminum, and 100 pounds of copper at a time. In Chicago I made $40 total off that metal. In Salt Lake City I made $87. Portland, I made about $60 and in Florida I made $94.

Over all it's pretty much only worth your time if you've got a full pickup load. And a place to store that much metal in between trips. Otherwise I just let my brother take most of it, he's got a large piece of property and has the room. Even then he loads up his pickup truck and a large cargo trailer before taking it in.

 

[patsal]

I took my 2004 Dodge Grand Caravan, after they weighed it they paid me out $400.