I recently bought some tool steel from a private owner and this roll of brass coil strip came in with the deal.
The brass is .015" thick x 1" wide. I don’t know how many feet the roll is (maybe it was 113ft, based on the number at the bottom?), but it’s quite a bit - the roll is 18" in diameter and weighs a good 50lbs or so.
I don’t have any use for this that I can think of (I’ve got plenty of shim stock) so I’d like to sell it, but am having a difficult time figuring out what to ask for it. Anyone happen to know what it’s worth?
Thanks guys. I should have mentioned that I do have an idea what it’s worth as scrap (roughly a dollar a pound), but my googling hasn’t turned up pricing for this stuff as sold by the coil, which I’d imagine to be 2-3 times as much maybe? I saw one site listing .25"x.015"x6" pieces for $4.99! Obviously retail to hobbyists or something, and doesn’t apply to my situation either.
Well, what the hey, I’ve listed it on craigslist locally for $100. OBO, I guess we’ll see what the market will bear, or if there even is a market, for this as anything other than scrap.
Who would normally sell something like this (I have no idea). Perhaps your local metal merchant? Find out what it goes for retail, and then sell it at a slight savings to attract potential buyers.
this is the actual London Metal Exchange link http://www.lme.co.uk/dataprices_daily_metal.asp here, you get all actual metal prices people in England and also some European countries would refer to when calculating their prices. Brass is CuZn, depending how much copper is in the price varies, a common brass is CuZn37 which cost in Europe on the 18th of May 580 €/100 kg refering to the “London Metal Exchange” lme.co.uk. In the USA before Katrina hit New Orleans Europeans also checked with New Orleans Metal Exchange, but I could not find anything about this. This is the bare metal price people would pay and on top of this the working price for the band cutting. The band you have there is only worth more for a metal company who produces stuff with exactly what you have there, 0,015 inch thickness is quite a common size, not really thin anymore and the width is not a small band either, interesting it gets when it is 5 mm or less wide. If you have the exact specifications of the material you could try and sell it on ebay, so if someone is hunting for it, they would know what hardness, breaking point, flexibility and copper/zinc or even if there is a point 000% of lead in… so if you know this, too and wanted to give it a try to sell individually and let me know in an email how much of which material you have, I could calculate for you what you would pay in Europe for a kilos of it incl. metal and working…
Selling it to a metal dealer or a metal company for scrap might be the easiest , you will receive less per kilo as there is a loss when it gets melted, usually calculation is for this “melting loss” 10 % by the metal companies who have a melting pot. I would imagine that the metal dealer also charges a handling fee for taking it in.
What I would love to suggest to you and you maybe happy lateron as I cannot see the metal prices stagnating but they most likely will raise more in price. If you find a metal dealer who operates with metal accounts for their customers, then do not sell it all for the money but get him to fix some of it on a metal account for you. He will not fix money on this account but kilos so if you then in the future need to buy tubing you would have an advantage of not having to pay the metal as this gets “taken from you account virtually”. I do not know about American metal dealers but in Germany they are happy to do this as this keeps the customers bound to them and for you it would help you keeping your metal needs affordable for a forseeable time.
Basically you cannot have a better timing in selling old copper-based metals for scrap as the price for it has nearly trippled in the last 3 years.
I’ve seen that stuff used as grounding strip in recording studios, radio stations and ham radio shacks. They ran along the floor to the various stations where microphones or equipment was used. it went under the carpet and didn’t leave a bump like round wire would do!
Loren, now that you can calculate an approxomate value… how do you plan to unload it?
Thanks for that. Unfortunately, The soft coil listed on the site, while available in different gauges, is only available in 12" wide coil, while mine is 1" wide, so I’d expect the pricing to be radically different.
Brigitte, thank for your info as well - good idea about possibly trading with metal merchant, since I do need brass and stainless rod stock. I’ll check to see if I can find someone local.
