Scrap Brass Prices Per Pound

No exchange trades brass, so a yard starts from the metals inside it. Yellow brass is roughly 67 percent copper and 33 percent zinc, which at today's prices is about $5.03 per pound of contained metal (0.67 x $6.66 copper plus 0.33 x $1.72 zinc). The yard pays below that contained value because brass has to be remelted as an alloy by a brass mill or ingot maker, some zinc burns off in the furnace, and the yard carries the same freight, risk, and margin it does on copper.

In practice yards post brass as a share of the copper price: clean yellow brass in the low-to-mid 40s percent, red brass and bronze higher because they carry more copper, and anything with steel or plastic still attached at a small fraction. When copper moves 10 percent, brass boards move about the same.

Yellow brass (about 65 to 70 percent copper, the rest zinc) is the everyday alloy: plumbing fittings, valves, faucet bodies, door hardware, keys, lamp parts, instrument parts, decorative pieces. It's bright yellow and the most common brass at any yard.

Red brass is 85 percent copper with roughly 5 percent each of zinc, tin, and lead. It's darker and more orange, used in older valves, water meters, pump parts, and bearings, and it pays more because the mill gets more copper out of it. Bronze is copper alloyed mainly with tin, used in bells, plaques, bearings, propellers, and marine fittings; yards usually pay it on the red brass line or a little above. Shell casings are a 70/30 yellow brass and sell on their own line once they're fired and free of steel and aluminum cases.

Scratch it. Fresh brass is yellow under the surface; copper is salmon-orange; bronze is a duller brown-orange. Brass and copper are both non-magnetic and much heavier than aluminum of the same size, which is the fastest check on a fitting. If a magnet sticks, it's brass-plated steel and worth steel money.

Chrome-plated brass is the common trap: bathroom fixtures, faucet spouts, and shower parts look silver but are brass underneath. File a spot to check. Yards pay chrome fixtures as dirty brass or, if the plating is thin and the piece is solid brass, sometimes as yellow. Cutting the steel stems and plastic cartridges out of a faucet body moves most of its weight from dirty to yellow, a difference of roughly three times the price per pound.

Plumbing tear-outs are the big one: valves, fittings, angle stops, faucet bodies, and the brass parts of water heaters. After that: door knobs and hinges, lamp bases, musical instruments too damaged to repair, radiator tanks (sold with the copper core as a radiator), keys, trophies, shell casings from ranges, and industrial bushings and bearings. Water meters have a lead-free brass body and sell on a separate, lower line at some yards because of the steel and glass inside.