Fired brass casings sell as their own grade, priced close to yellow brass. At our board’s brass price of $3.57 a pound, a 9mm case is worth about 3.2 cents, a .223 case about 4.9 cents and a .308 case about 9.2 cents. A full five gallon bucket of 9mm brass, roughly 40 pounds and about 4,500 cases, comes to around $143 as scrap. Sold as once-fired brass to reloaders, the same cases typically fetch two to three times that.
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.
That comparison is the whole decision, and almost nobody publishes it in a form you can check. Below is the arithmetic, the grade rules, and the safety and legal points specific to this material.
Why casings have their own grade
Cartridge brass is C260, an alloy of about 70 percent copper and 30 percent zinc. Common yellow brass from plumbing and fittings runs nearer 60 to 70 percent copper, so cartridge brass sits at the top of the yellow brass band rather than below it.
Yards list it separately because it arrives clean, uniform and in volume, which is easy material to handle. Our board carries brass at $3.57 a pound today, which is 61.3 percent of the bare copper price, and casings generally price at or slightly above a mixed yellow brass line.
What a case is actually worth
| 9mm Luger | .45 ACP | .223 / 5.56 | .308 / 7.62 | .50 BMG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Measurement | Case weight, cases per pound, scrap value each | Same | Same | Same | Same |
| Empty case weight | About 62 grains | About 88 grains | About 95 grains | About 180 grains | About 850 grains |
| Cases per pound | About 113 | About 80 | About 74 | About 39 | About 8 |
| Scrap value per case | 3.2 cents | 4.5 cents | 4.9 cents | 9.2 cents | 43 cents |
| Scrap value per 1,000 | About $32 | About $45 | About $48 | About $92 | About $434 |
Case weights vary between manufacturers and between military and commercial production, so treat these as a working basis rather than a specification. The method matters more than the figures: divide 7,000 grains by the case weight to get cases per pound, then multiply by your yard’s brass price.
Scrap or reloaders
Once-fired brass in good condition has a second market. Reloaders buy it by the thousand, sorted by headstamp and calibre, and they pay for usable cases rather than for metal.
Across common calibres that market typically pays two to three times the scrap value, and more for hard-to-find or match-grade headstamps. The trade-off is work: sorting by calibre and headstamp, checking for splits and berdan priming, and cleaning. A range clearing several hundred pounds a month rarely has time for that; an individual shooter with one calibre often does.
The practical rule is calibre driven. High-volume pistol brass is worth sorting only in quantity, while rifle brass in .308, .30-06 and larger repays the sorting time on far fewer pieces.
The safety points that are not optional
Check every single case. A live round in a scrap load is a genuine hazard to the yard’s shear and to the people operating it, and it is the fastest way to be refused for good.
- Inspect visually and by weight; a loaded case is noticeably heavier and has a projectile seated in the mouth.
- Never scrap live ammunition. Unwanted or aged rounds go to a law enforcement collection, a licensed disposal contractor or a specialist demil recycler, not to a general yard.
- Keep primers in mind. Primer compounds contain lead, and range brass carries lead residue, so wash your hands and keep it out of food areas.
- Do not tumble or process brass indoors without ventilation for the same reason.
Grade discipline at the scale
- Separate steel and aluminium cases. Cheap imported ammunition uses both, they are magnetic or noticeably light, and they downgrade a whole bucket to dirty brass.
- Remove links, clips and belts. Steel links in a load of .50 brass turn a premium grade into irony brass.
- Keep casings free of soil and grass. Dirt is weight the yard cannot sell and invites a deduction.
- Do not mix casings with plumbing brass, radiators or bronze. Each is a different line, as our copper grades guide sets out for the copper family.
- Dry material only. Wet buckets take a moisture deduction.
Ranges, clubs and military material
At commercial scale this is a different transaction. Ranges generating hundreds of pounds a month should be talking about a collection service, a tiered price and a contract, not a walk-in rate.
Military and law enforcement material is more restricted again. Demilitarised ordnance, artillery shells and tactical munitions go to specialist recyclers set up for them, and some states and buyers apply their own rules to shell casings specifically. If material came from a government source, expect documentation to be part of the sale.
Key numbers
- Cartridge brass is C260 at roughly 70 percent copper and 30 percent zinc; common yellow brass runs nearer 60 to 70 percent copper.
- Our brass board is $3.57 a pound today, 61.3 percent of the bare copper price of $5.82 (Scrap Price Today series).
- There are 7,000 grains in a pound, which is the conversion behind every figure in the table above.
- A 40 pound bucket of 9mm brass holds roughly 4,500 cases and is worth about $143 at today’s brass price.
- Published yard quotes for brass shells have recently run in the region of $2.50 to $3.20 a pound depending on market and region (trade price listings).
- Once-fired brass sold to reloaders commonly fetches two to three times scrap value for sorted, usable cases.
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 | ₺394.80 / kg | $3.62 | 1.04 |
| Germany | €6.98 / kg | $3.55 | 1.02 |
| United States | $3.48 / lb | $3.48 | 1.00 |
| China | CN¥50.40 / kg | $3.41 | 0.98 |
| Canada | C$4.79 / lb | $3.38 | 0.97 |
| United Kingdom | £5.55 / kg | $3.34 | 0.96 |
| Australia | A$10.54 / kg | $3.31 | 0.95 |
| United Arab Emirates | AED26.77 / kg | $3.31 | 0.95 |
| Saudi Arabia | SAR26.76 / kg | $3.24 | 0.93 |
| India | ₹671 / kg | $3.20 | 0.92 |
| Bangladesh | ৳831 / kg | $3.06 | 0.88 |
| South Africa | R107.75 / kg | $2.96 | 0.85 |
How we produced this
The per-case values are calculated from published nominal case weights in grains, converted at 7,000 grains to the pound, and multiplied by our current brass board price. That price is derived from copper and zinc benchmarks using published recovery shares, documented on the editorial policy page, with live figures on the board.
Case weights differ by manufacturer, by military versus commercial production and by whether a case has been trimmed, so weigh a sample of your own material rather than relying on the table. The reloader multiple is a market observation from published bulk listings rather than a quoted price, and it moves with both brass and ammunition supply.
We do not buy brass, sell reloading components or take referral fees. The safety points are included because a live round in a scrap load is the one mistake in this material that harms someone other than the seller.