What to do with all this scrap

[GnusMas]

I usually rely on community scrap buckets at every dig I attend, but I still ended up bringing some scrap home with me. Realistically, what kind of payout could I expect for a 45-liter tub filled with iron, lead, and other scrap metals? Should I hang onto it and take it to a local scrap yard, or is the return so low that I might as well throw it into the community bucket at the next dig?

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[fred]

The iron is worth bugger all in small quantities so best take it to the recycling centre next time you go.

Lead is currently about £1 a kilo, brass £3 and copper £5 but it varies from place to place and with the world markets. It needs to be separated into different metals and fairly free from dirt as mixed metals attract a much lower price. Scrap merchants may not take just a few kilos, better to get a bucketful.

[Phil2401]

Fred as always gives the sensible answer to the question, but it just gave me a random thought about 'hedge fodder' - field boundaries change over the years, hedges are uprooted and new fields thus created. Thinking of all the junk I've chucked into hedges (as I'm sure have many others), some poor detectorist in the future will be finding all sorts of little 'treasures' and wondering why they are all in a straight line...

Maybe I need to go and do something useful instead of sitting here writing rubbish!

Phil

[MilitaryMetalMagnut]

A small amount of iron scrap is probably better chucked into the metals skip at the local recycling centre, that’s what I do with that sort of thing. I find lots and lots of brass cartridges (I look on a WW2 training site that’s still in use for training exercises), and I usually wait until I have at least 40/45 kilos worth of brass before going to the scrappy.

Best regards,

Simon

[KevinB]

I have two containers one I use for lead the other for copper and brass which I separate and clean up a bit when full. Iron to the dump. It takes me ages to get a decent amount to scrap but why chuck it when it will get you a few pints and a curry!!...