Lead splits into four buckets at the scale and they pay very differently. Clean soft lead, meaning sheet, pipe, flashing and cable sheathing, fetches around $0.55 a pound. Wheel weights average nearer $0.14. Batteries are a separate category again at about $0.23. Putting the first into a bucket of the second costs about $0.41 on every pound, and a single zinc weight found in a lead bucket can reprice the entire load as dirty steel.
Scrap Price Today market analysis, written from exchange settlement data, mill and refiner pricing practice and published policy documents. Figures are examples; today's numbers are on the live scrap price board.
Lead is also the densest metal you will ever carry, so these mistakes compound faster than with any other material.
The four buckets
Soft lead, clean. Roofing sheet and flashing, old plumbing pipe, cable sheathing, radiation shielding from medical and dental demolition, and pure ingots. Bends easily, marks with a fingernail, no coating. This is the top grade at roughly $0.40 to $0.55 a pound.
Hard lead, meaning wheel weights. Alloyed with antimony to harden it, and fitted with steel clips. National listings put the average near $0.14 a pound, with a range from $0.10 for unsorted buckets up to $0.30 for clean verified lead weights. Range lead from indoor shooting ranges sits in a similar band, around $0.20 to $0.40.
Dirty and mixed lead. Anything with paint, rubber coating, steel attachments or unsorted grades mixed together. Discounted, sometimes heavily.
Lead-acid batteries. Not metallic lead scrap at all as far as a yard is concerned, because of the acid and the plastic casing. Around $0.23 a pound on our board, and covered separately in our scrap battery prices article.
Where each bucket sits against the exchange
The lead benchmark is $1,843 a tonne, which is $0.836 a pound. Expressing each grade as a share of that makes the ladder obvious.
| Grade | Price a pound | Share of the exchange price |
|---|---|---|
| Soft lead, clean, top of range | $0.55 | 66% |
| Our indicative lead board | $0.59 | 71% |
| Soft lead, low end | $0.40 | 48% |
| Range lead and clean wheel weights, high end | $0.30 | 36% |
| Lead-acid batteries | $0.23 | 28% |
| Wheel weights, national average | $0.14 | 17% |
| Wheel weights, unsorted bucket | $0.10 | 12% |
For comparison, clean copper sits at about 87 percent of its exchange price on our board. Lead never gets that close, and the reason is processing rather than margin.
One trade explanation puts it plainly: a recycler can melt 100 pounds of clean lead in under an hour with minimal sorting, while the same weight in battery cores takes two workers four hours to dismantle, neutralise and separate. The price gap is the labour, not the metal.
Telling lead from the things that look like it
Modern wheel weights are frequently zinc or steel, and mixing them into a lead bucket is the single most expensive error in this material.
- Side cutters. Squeeze the weight. Lead dents and notches easily. Zinc is much harder and barely marks.
- Magnet. Steel weights stick. Lead and zinc do not.
- Fingernail or knife. Soft lead scratches with almost no pressure. If it resists, it is alloyed, zinc, or something else.
- Weight in hand. Lead is startlingly heavy for its size. Anything that feels light for its volume is not lead.
Yards are explicit that finding zinc or steel in a lead bucket drops the whole load to dirty scrap steel prices, so it is worth twenty minutes with cutters and a magnet before you drive.
What each mistake costs
| Mistake | What happens | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Soft lead tipped into the wheel weight bucket | Graded as hard lead | About $0.41 a pound |
| Brass fittings or iron clamps left on lead pipe | Graded as dirty | Around $0.44 a pound on published guidance |
| Zinc or steel weights in a lead bucket | Whole load regraded | Repriced as dirty scrap steel |
| Wet or sludgy material | Water weight deduction | Deducted at the scale |
| Painted or rubber-coated lead not cleaned | Dirty grade | Discounted |
Density, and why a small pile is a big load
Lead is 708 pounds a cubic foot. Copper is 559, steel 490, aluminium 169.
A five gallon bucket is about 0.67 cubic feet. Filled solid that is 473 pounds of lead. Realistically, loose wheel weights pack to around 60 percent, which is still roughly 284 pounds, worth about $40 at the wheel weight average or $156 if it were soft lead. Folded sheet packs nearer half, about 236 pounds.
Two practical consequences. First, do not fill a five gallon bucket with lead and then try to lift it. Use smaller containers or a sack truck. Second, a pile that looks trivial can be a serious weight, which is why lead is one of the few grades where a small quantity is still worth selling.
Handling: this is the toxic one
Every other metal on our board is inert in normal handling. Lead is not.
- Wear gloves, and wash hands before eating, drinking or smoking. Ingestion is the main route in scrapping.
- Do not cut, grind, sand or burn lead indoors or without ventilation. Fume and dust are the hazards, not the solid metal.
- Keep it away from children and anyone pregnant. There is no safe exposure level for a child.
- Change clothes and do not carry dust into a house or vehicle interior.
- Old lead paint on architectural lead is regulated in most jurisdictions and is a separate problem from the metal.
Roof and plumbing lead is normally removed by trades who already work to these rules. If you are buying material from a demolition, ask what it was attached to before you decide how to handle it.
Where lead sits in the market right now
Lead is the one metal on our board below where it was a year ago, down 5.8 percent over twelve months, 13.6 percent over three years and 20.9 percent over five. Copper rose 57 percent over that same five-year window.
The reason is structural. Demand is dominated by the starter battery, which is being displaced at the margin, while a mature collection system keeps recycled supply arriving. Holding lead waiting for a rally has been a losing position for five years, as our five-year price history shows.
What this metal pays around the world
Scrap is a global market priced in US dollars, but what reaches a seller depends on trade position, freight to the nearest consumer and how many buyers compete locally. The table below converts the same grade into each market’s own currency and units at the day’s exchange rate, and shows the factor we apply.
| Market | Local price | USD per lb | Market factor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turkey | ₺65.55 / kg | $0.61 | 1.04 |
| Germany | €1.14 / kg | $0.60 | 1.02 |
| United States | $0.59 / lb | $0.59 | 1.00 |
| China | CN¥8.57 / kg | $0.58 | 0.98 |
| Canada | C$0.79 / lb | $0.57 | 0.97 |
| United Kingdom | £0.92 / kg | $0.57 | 0.96 |
| Australia | A$1.71 / kg | $0.56 | 0.95 |
| United Arab Emirates | AED4.54 / kg | $0.56 | 0.95 |
| Saudi Arabia | SAR4.54 / kg | $0.55 | 0.93 |
| India | ₹113 / kg | $0.54 | 0.92 |
| Bangladesh | ৳141 / kg | $0.52 | 0.88 |
| South Africa | R17.64 / kg | $0.50 | 0.85 |
Method
The exchange benchmark comes from a monthly published international price series rather than a daily exchange feed, which is documented on our editorial policy page and means our lead board steps monthly rather than daily. Live figures are on the board.
Grade prices are collected from published yard and buyer listings across several states and are ranges because lead pricing varies regionally and by volume. Density figures are standard values for the pure metals. The bucket calculations assume packing factors and are illustrative rather than measured.
We do not buy lead or take referral fees. The handling section is included because lead is the one common scrap material where the health risk is larger than the money involved.