Insulated Copper Wire Scrap Prices

A yard can't see through a jacket, so it prices wire by type using known recovery rates: the share of the wire's weight that is copper once the plastic is stripped. Thin-jacketed building wire like THHN runs 75 to 85 percent copper; sheathed house wire (Romex) 60 to 68 percent including the bare ground; appliance cords and car harnesses 40 to 50 percent; communications cable 35 to 45 percent; Christmas lights 10 to 15 percent. The yard multiplies the recovery by its bare copper price, then takes a further cut for the stripping it has to do.

Two labels you'll see on boards: insulated wire No.1 (roughly 75 percent recovery and up, THHN and heavy cable) and insulated wire No.2 (thinner conductors under thicker jackets). Some yards post recovery brackets instead, like "45 to 50% ICW". Either way the number behind the label is the same: how much copper comes out.

THHN / THWN is single-conductor building wire with a thin nylon jacket, the best-paying wire as-is. MCM and feeder cable (heavy stranded conductors) recovers 88 percent or more and some yards pay it close to No.1 copper. Romex (NM-B) is the flat sheathed cable in most houses; the ground wire inside is already bare. Extension cords, appliance cords, and car harnesses carry thick rubber or PVC over small conductors. Cat 5 and Cat 6 is fine-strand copper under a lot of plastic. Christmas lights are the bottom of the board, and some yards won't take them.

Watch for three things that aren't copper wire at all: aluminum wire (service entrance and URD cable, silver-colored conductor, sold as aluminum), copper-clad aluminum (a thin copper skin over aluminum, priced as aluminum), and BX or MC cable with a steel or aluminum armor, which sells near steel because the armor is most of the weight.

Stripped wire sells as bare bright, so the question is whether the copper you'd recover is worth more than the jacketed price plus your time. Today a pound of THHN at 80 percent recovery becomes 0.8 pounds of bare bright worth $4.26 to $4.69, against $3.55 to $4.23 as-is. A pound of Romex at 65 percent becomes $3.46 to $3.81, against $2.86 to $3.41 as-is. The gain per pound is modest, and it takes a hand-crank or powered stripper to make it worth an hour.

Two catches. Stripped wire thinner than 16 gauge is No.1, not bare bright, and tinned (silver-coated) conductors are also No.1. And a yard grading a bin of stripped wire will drop the whole bin a grade if it finds jacket fragments, so strip cleanly or don't bother. The scrap copper prices page carries the bare bright and No.1 figures the math depends on.

Renovations and demolitions produce Romex by the hundred feet; electricians accumulate THHN offcuts; appliance and electronics teardown gives cords and harnesses; motor and transformer rewinds give magnet wire, which is enamel-coated and usually bought as No.2 or as motor windings.

Utility and telecom cable is a different matter. Yards are required in most states to refuse wire that shows utility markings or looks like it came off a pole, and copper theft laws mean they record and often photograph every copper sale. Bring ID, and if you're clearing a building, bring something that shows you were entitled to.