Anyone want to try and get some scrap metal?

blazinlow89

Original poster
Member
Jan 25, 2012
2,088
Friend at work found these beauties today online.

0001 - Uncategorized at Government Liquidation

85k total lbs. Mostly aluminum, figure about $150k worth of 6061, sheet metal, rivets, braces, blocks etc. Miles of copper wire, nickel, stainless, maybe even some titanium and magnesium left. Probably cost about $20k to get it the Cali, $25k to the eastern seaboard. These things are HUGE, bigger than most single wide trailers. Would make a very nice tree house :raspberry:.
 

STLtrailbSS

Member
Dec 4, 2011
1,617
There is 30K pounds of hollow and solid aluminum bars in the Missouri section $150 What A Steal.
 

Blckshdw

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Nov 20, 2011
10,665
Tampa Bay Area, FL
Found some cool stuff on that site in my area that I could actually use... Great, somewhere else to potentially drain my nonexistant funds :hopeless:
 

mrrsm

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Oct 22, 2015
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Metal Really IS Money...

Many years ago.... Every time my son would hit me up for a $20.00 Bill... I would say to him, "Son ...you HAVE money lying around all over the place! And now that I mention it, perhaps we should stop throwing it out with the damned trash all the time and see if we can accumulate some of it..." He gave me that practiced, teenagers puzzled smirk that was a mixture of curiosity and fake outrage and asked, "What... Am I going to have to DO something... like rake leaves..or...?" And I stopped him right there. I said "Scotty...I know how much you like the T-1000 (Poly-Morphic-Hemi-metal) AI Robot in "The Terminator"... and its cool to see...but we have an Equivalent Metal all around us, that when aggregated and melted later... is worth REAL CASH. If you know where to look, even right now here inside the house... if you are not too lazy to earn it... The Real Money is right here.. in the form of ALUMINUM."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium

I explained to him that Aluminum does not have as high a return-on-the-dollar, such as Copper or Brass does, but. because it is SO ubiquitous (abundant and largely ignored and available everywhere) in America, there is a lot of the stuff laying around that can be collected, crushed and taken no farther than about a mile and half from our home and turned over at the local junk yard for Cold Cash." Well, I sent him on his first Scrap Aluminum Scavenge Hunt that ended up gleaning him around $40.00 for a weekend's work at collecting Aluminum cans, Chipotle Tops, Cat Food Cans (NOT 9-Lives... those are strictly rust inhibitor-coated mild steel) and so forth, even down to those thin but pure aluminum covers they have on Apple Sauce Cups... because the only thing that matters is the WEIGHT and not the useful form it was cast and pressed into before being used and thrown away. Hell... I even got him to clean his room around the Computer Desk! LOL

I proved my point easily, because since I neither drink nor smoke... but one of my few and only remaining vices in life... is that I drink a lot of Diet Coke. And so THAT, if nothing else would be a constant and reliable source of a cash stream that he could augment with collecting his OWN Mountain Dews, Red Bulls, Chipotle lids and anything else like Aluminum Pie pans, etc. And so, we have been doing this ever since. These images show my own collection from just over a two week period... you can see that this brief amount of time, these "cast-offs" fill two Large Plastic Bags equaling 84 Gallons in volume and.... has a decent heft, too

So.... Why Throw Away Good Money...?

When I took him to the Junk Yard and he got his M$ney in hand, he leaned into the Glass Window at the Check Out Office and after thanking the Owner, he said:

"I'LL BE BAAAACK..." (Thanks for that GREAT LINE, Ahhhhnold)
 

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mrrsm

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This video is about what is possible when you realize that Scrap Metal is NOT synonymous with CRAP or TRASH, as so many people believe in our more modern times. This Documentary is about a time in America when we were perhaps a lot more "Scrappy", creative and physically strong and industrious about our daily need to "Scrap" with Mother Nature and fight against all manner of natural and unnatural enemies in the New World; mostly those with a head like ours and sporting two legs and two arms... while carrying things in our direction meant to do us harm.

Most of the members here will not recognize that the Primary Narrator of this film is none other than Mr. David Brinkley; one half of the original 1960s NBC News Team famously known and respected as "The Huntley-Brinkley Report" (Mr. Chet Huntley was his partner). This program came on each work week night at around 6:00 PM, on Black and White Television sets across the nation that were often as small as 10" that were being watched by living rooms full of people, and then later on, NBC pioneered the first productions using live color television in the United States.

The Secondary Narrator, Mr. William Devane, may be more familiar to those who can remember his role in the Dustin Hoffman Thriller, "The Marathon Man" alongside Sir Lawrence Olivier and Roy Scheider (The 7-Ups and "Jaws"). This film is well worth downloading and keeping on hand against the advent of a time when civilization collapses and The Men who are Skilled in Making Useful Things From Scrap once again rise in the esteem of those who manage to survive the Apocalypse:

 
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mrrsm

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This is an ancient TV production from The Reynolds Aluminum Company that gives a great foundation for understanding the history, utility, mining and manufacturing and product use processes of Aluminum. The only thing that is painfully absent here is the fact that presently, this metal has the highest percentage of being usefully recycled of any other scrap metal... at 99%.

Within the last year or so... the Alcoa Aluminum Company has shut down many of its production plants for processing Aluminum... but soon our nation will be launching major public works to improve many of the crumbling infra-structures that were created as new around the time this Movie was produced over a half century ago. This means that the demand for Aluminum will rise and the spot value of Aluminum Scrap Metal will increase as well. And that can mean a decent price for your collection of publicly discarded Aluminum cans and other food containers as well:

 
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Mooseman

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Dec 4, 2011
25,257
Ottawa, ON
Very topical, ChrisFix posted this video that explains very easily how to recycle old parts for cash. I've done it many times and hopefully soon will do the same with the shell of the 9-7x after I've stripped it of the worthwhile parts.

 
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mrrsm

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My son's busy schedule and my being mostly laid up has lead to an accumulation of Aluminum cans to the tune of around 7 - 50 Gallon Plastic Trash Bags full. He stopped by to gather them up and head over to the local Scrap Yard and the verdict on their value really surprised me. According to some organizations that track the "Economy of Metals" worldwide... many of the 9 Alumunim Foundries dotting the American States have either reduced their workload and output or shut down entirely beginning in 2014.

The biggest factor causing this is apparently due to a greatly reduced overall manufacturing and production level of durable goods over in China that has taken the "Spot value" of Aluminum down by around 20%. What is weird about it is that the collection of scrap Aluminum also drops off precipitously as the loss in value discourages scrap collectors from even bothering to try.

Here are the numbers and the value of Aluminum Cans as of today on the West Coast of Florida. I still expect this demand to radically increase between 2017-2020 as we start up of some of the much needed National Infra-structure Public Works projects for Public Transportation, Water, Power and Electricity. These major works will serve to drive the metal market upwards and out of their serious doldrums. In the mean time... I guess I'll just have to start drinking my Diet Cokes out of 40 Oz: Aluminum Cans instead of the usual 12 Ozers:

Total Weight: 102 Lbs
Total # of Cans per Lb: 32.3
Total Cash Scrap Value: $35.00
 

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