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Questions on Selling Brass

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IamSalty

Operator
I have a friend that is collecting a lot of once fired brass and wants to try selling it vs scrapping it.
He had a few questions on maximizing profit. It will be primarily 9mm, and possibly some .40 and .223.


1. Clean vs no clean
2. De-cap vs not
3. Quantity ( 100 / 500 / 1000 batches)
4. Where to sell? (Gunbroker, Etsy, Facebook, other suggestions?)
5. Price per piece? (thinking around $.05/piece )


Thoughts?
 
He probably should consider how much time and effort he wants to put into it. At 5¢ does it make monetary sense to clean/decap it?

As for listing it, I personally would stay on gun-related sites. Most likely to find interested buyers and way less likely to encounter anti-gun people or risk running afoul of the thought police and other wokeists who would harass them just because.
 
I peruse the SASS wire and belong to SASS. Many people sell brass there. It is clean and deprimed. They list a price and whether shipping is extra or not. I couldn't say about pricing for yours, but I bought several bags of mixed 9mm for $20/500. I don't think it was once fired. Some folks post For Sale ads at their local range, others do online. Do you have a local free paper? Lots of possibilities. Only you can decide whether it is worth it or not.
 
IamSalty said:
I have a friend that is collecting a lot of once fired brass and wants to try selling it vs scrapping it.
He had a few questions on maximizing profit. It will be primarily 9mm, and possibly some .40 and .223.


1. Clean vs no clean
2. De-cap vs not
3. Quantity ( 100 / 500 / 1000 batches)
4. Where to sell? (Gunbroker, Etsy, Facebook, other suggestions?)
5. Price per piece? (thinking around $.05/piece )


Thoughts?
Click to expand...
1) collect, and bag at least 500 per bag, per caliber, sell as-is...

why put more time and effort into it..??

you won't sell it for what you invest into it.

personally for me..??

when i collect more brass than what i can use..??

i dump it into 5 gallon pails, and off to the scrap yard

no haggling over price, dirty, deprimed, polished....

screw that.
 
my old indoor range sold brass in bags of 100, and it was just swept up off the floor and eyeballed
still had primers
 
powerboatr said:
my old indoor range sold brass in bags of 100, and it was just swept up off the floor and eyeballed
still had primers
Click to expand...
that's what my range does, or did..i hadn't seen any brass there for a while.

my club wanted to sell brass as well, but then they figured time to separate the calibers, wasn't worth the volunteers time.

best to sweep, dump in bucket, take to salvage yard


or bag it for oneself in the event of a future shortage?

i have one of those vacuum bagging machines for food?

i can bag maybe 500 rds of each caliber, suck out the air, and seal them....no humidity issues.

mine will at least be cleaned/polished only
 
Old_Me said:
1) collect, and bag at least 500 per bag, per caliber, sell as-is...

why put more time and effort into it..??

you won't sell it for what you invest into it.

personally for me..??

when i collect more brass than what i can use..??

i dump it into 5 gallon pails, and off to the scrap yard

no haggling over price, dirty, deprimed, polished....

screw that.
Click to expand...
I do the same. I save my 308 ,30-06, 7mm REM Mag and .357 mag.
Everything else is in 5 gallon buckets to drop off for scrap.
I think I have 6 , 5 gallon buckets of 9mm, and .223/5.56 now to take in for scrap.
 
He was already leaning to dirty, once fired, unprocessed. That is more his style. Separation isn't a big issue since he is only picking up what was fired during a recertification session. From my point of view, it is literally all profit for him. It will pay for powder and primers. I think that I agree that staying to posting on gun related sales sites makes more sense to minimize issues.


Looks like
unprocessed 223 is going for about $50/1000 including shipping
unprocessed 9mm $35-$45/1000 including shipping
 
GaCop said:
My last 5 gallon bucket of range brass I took to the recycler netted $122.
Click to expand...
yeah i was told that gun brass is about 10¢ to 20¢ cheaper per pound that plumbing brass.

that does not bother me, as it is accumulated brass, and if i can get at least $40 for half a bucket that day, i'm good.

good enough for 2 Mikey D's filet-o-fish sammiches and a coke.

i tried watching brass prices as i near the day i take it to the salvage yard, but they are not local prices, so i don't know where the salvage yard gets his prices from.

no issues for me, it's money for doing nothing.
 
A range here I worked we collected it and filled 55 gal blue barrels (around 660-700 pounds a barrel) a guy the owner had a deal wit came in and bought I. Supposedly for scrap.

They use to separated by calibers but the owner stopped he was laying folks more than he was getting.

Reloaders were good to pick up their brass though.

I can see SASS selling as that could be a special market with revolver cartridges but I’m not so sure there is enough money on selling anything cleaned and de primed.
 
Old_Me said:
yeah i was told that gun brass is about 10¢ to 20¢ cheaper per pound that plumbing brass.

that does not bother me, as it is accumulated brass, and if i can get at least $40 for half a bucket that day, i'm good.

good enough for 2 Mikey D's filet-o-fish sammiches and a coke.

i tried watching brass prices as i near the day i take it to the salvage yard, but they are not local prices, so i don't know where the salvage yard gets his prices from.

no issues for me, it's money for doing nothing.
Click to expand...
Yeah, plumbing brass is a higher brass content. Cartridge brass is 70% brass and 30 % zinc.
 
Red brass ( which is higher copper content than plumbing/ yellow brass) is right now over $2/lb. #2 copper is close to $3/lb. And I just happen to amass quantities of both on a daily basis.
 
Call around. I’ve got 5(5) gallon buckets full of 9 mm and 5.56 . One recycling company I called offered me .75 cents/lb. I laughed and hung up, another place 15 minutes away offered 1.89/ lb . I’ll sit on it for the time being.
 
I know I'm late to this. :rolleyes:
I had a good friend who sold reloading supplies at gun shows. He both bought and sold once fired brass. It wasn't worth the time and effort to deprime. At most he might throw it in a tumbler for a while.
He sold it by the pound. He knew right at how many pieces of any given caliber made up one pound and priced accordingly. He kept a scale on the table and weighed out as much as you wanted.
 
Not to argue or fight, but "yellow" brass is 51% copper. "Red" brass is 81% copper. Copper is the only component cared about by recyclers. Plenty of yellow brass used in many "plumbing" fittings. Any recycler willing to pay you more money for a "plumbing" fitting they think is red brass, sell it to them.
 
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