My prices 11-14-11 Rochester, NY

Took a load in to the yard today in my car. It was mostly stuff left behind from e-scraping after I had pulled the boards, hardrives etc, and dismanted the power supplies and pulled the goodies from inside them. The computer cases, wires, heatsinks, etc.

I found out that my yard classifies almost all aluminum as sheet aluminum: Extrusion, cast, sheet, painted all went into the same bin. If it isn't irony or wheel rims it goes as sheet $.50/lb. I also found it amusing they pay $.09 for irony aluminum at the scales but if you throw it on the shred pile you get $.12/lb.

180 lbs tin at $.12/lb ($270/gross ton)
32 lbs aluminum at $.50/lb
19 lbs copper 1 at $2.50 From stripping wires, transformers and the donuts inside power supplies
1 lb copper 2 at $2.35 The silver colored tinned wire and tinned copper from heat sinks
58 lbs motors at $.22
23 lbs mid grade insulated wire at $.93/lb IDE cables, rainbow power supply wires, a few power cords, etc



$121 all told

Nice payout for a car load.

If I could get that kind of price for tin here in Idaho I would be in hog heaven . Were lucky to be getting 155.00 to 160.00 a ton . Any way thanks for the info on prices.

Originally Posted by Mechanic688

At my yard we take all our old computer fans and cut off the plastic guard from around it and the rest goes in with our small transformers and motors from cd/dvd drives

Thanks for the good idea. Unfortunately the price I'm getting for motors seems to be a bit below average compared to what I've seen others claming to get. If I ever start to get $.30+ a pound I might go out of my way to do this but at only 10 cents over tin I just toss the entire fan in with the random metal bits and with the added weight of the plastic frame that would otherwise have been removed with your method I think I'm currently pretty close to break even and don't have to deal with the hassel of cutting them apart. I tried manually getting the copper out of a couple of them and it is pretty annoying and darn near impossible.

The same goes for the motors out of drives, it is a time sink for such a little motor I'd basically be making a fraction of a cent by tearing them out so I just leave them in the drive and send the entire thing to the shred pile. The big transformers on the low grade boards from computer power supplies I try to get them off for the motor pile but if they are being resistant or in a difficult spot I'll give up rather than spending much time on them.

Definately something to keep in mind though if prices for the motors go up in my area.

Quick update, my apartment was getting cluttered so I loaded up the car and took in a few hundred pounds of computer cases, heat sinks and wire.

Steel shread/tin: $287/gross ton =$.12815/lb
55% recovery wire: $1.03/lb
Mixed aluminum: $.50/lb

Originally Posted by High Voltage Processing

Wow they are killing you on wire. I am currently at $1.26 for 55% recovery.

This is for the rainbow wire from computers that I believe you said in a different post that you don't take? Either way I don't get very large amounts of it, just what I pull from PCs. If you were closer I'd be looking to send my wire your way.

definately sticking it to you, if you can sit on it till you find an aggressive buyer in the area. I find that alot of yards that focus on ferrous aren't as competitive with red metals. I consider myself to be more aggressive buying red metals vs. white metals.