Howdy, all-
I've been lurking on and off this forum for a number of months. While I doubt I'll ever have the time to contribute much, I've learned a whoooole lot about scrapping from you folks (particularly e-scrapping!) and thought I should go ahead and sign up.
Scrapping is not my day-job, but something I enjoy doing on the side with my kids (though my wife doesn't always appreciate the piles of stuff under the carport!). I use scrapping to teach the kids about economics (how much something is worth, how people make money buying and selling stuff, how much an hour of work is worth, etc.), environmentalism (the difference between taking stuff to the scrapyard vs. the city dump vs leaving it on the side of the road or in the woods), a little science and engineering (how things are put together (and not designed to be taken apart and fixed anymore!), what different types of metals are and what they're used for), and the interest/value of doing something active as opposed to sitting around playing video games. So far, the kids are still young enough that I don't embarrass them every time I stick my head in a dumpster!
So far we've "re-invested" our profits by buying old US silver dollars and have accumulated quite a little "pirate hoard" of cool-looking (and inherently valuable) coins that the kids can play around with (I guess they've learned a little history, too!). I tell them we're kind of modern-day alchemists, turning steel, aluminum and copper into silver- just something fun to do together as a family.
I'm prepping my first shipment of e-scrap to an aggregator- should that turn out to be reasonably profitable I might consider how to turn my hobby into something of a sideline business, but that's a bit in the future....
Anyway, cheers from Kansas!
thebugguy
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