Most disappointment at the scale is a grading problem rather than a pricing one. Four physical checks settle almost every copper load, and this names the grade and prices it at today's rate.
- 1. What shape is it?
- 3. Scratch it with a file. What colour is underneath? A silver surface with copper beneath is tinned. Copper outside with a silver core is copper-clad aluminium, and it is paid as aluminium.
- 4. Is anything still attached? Cutting attachments off takes seconds and is the highest-paid work in scrap.
Prices are this site's live board and move daily. Yards apply their own grade names and may split these differently; the ReMA code shown is the specification behind the grade. Identification here is a guide, not a guarantee of what a buyer will call it.
The four checks a yard actually applies
Form. Wire, pipe, sheet and bar are graded differently before anything else is considered. Sheet is light copper whatever its condition; heavy bar is at the top of the solid grades.
Coating. Scratch it with a file. Copper shows reddish underneath. A silver surface with copper beneath is tinned copper, which cannot reach bare bright however clean it is, because the coating is part of the material.
Core. Cut a strand and look at the end. Copper throughout is copper. Copper on the outside with a silver core is copper-clad aluminium, and it is paid as aluminium. Most cheap jumper cables and budget audio wire are CCA.
Attachments. Solder joints, brass fittings, paint and steel all pull a piece down a grade. Steel is the expensive one: irony copper at $3.68 against number 1 at $5.95 is over two dollars a pound for a cut that takes seconds.
The sorting tools guide covers the tools these checks need, which come to about $13 all in.
Insulated wire is a different question
Once a conductor is insulated, coating and attachments stop mattering. It is priced on recovery, meaning the share of the total weight that is actually copper.
- Building wire, single insulated conductor: about 75 percent
- Sheathed household cable: about 65 percent
- Cat5, Cat6 and phone cable: under 50 percent
Below roughly 48 percent, stripping does not pay: the copper you free does not cover the time. That is the line between a stripping job and a granulation job, and the stripping payback calculator works out whether your volume justifies a machine at all.
The habit that matters more than the tools
A mixed load is paid at the lowest grade present. One soldered joint in a clean pile of number 1 can regrade the lot, and a single length of tinned wire in a bare bright pile does the same.
So the highest-paid work available is separating into piles before you weigh. The checks above exist to make those piles correct, not to make them faster.
Where this stops
These tests are physical and they settle copper. They do not settle alloy composition: a file and a magnet cannot tell 304 from 316 stainless, or one aluminium series from another. That needs instrumentation, and the XRF guide covers when the volume justifies it.
Local grade names also differ. What a yard calls a grade varies by market, and the ReMA code shown alongside each result is the specification behind it. The copper grade pages set out what each market calls these and what it pays.