Scrap Lead Prices Per Pound

The benchmark is the LME lead price, quoted per tonne and about $0.87 per pound today. Nearly all scrap lead goes to secondary smelters that make new battery lead, so yards discount the benchmark by what it costs to get material there and by how much of the weight is actually lead. Clean soft lead is all lead, so it keeps the most. A car battery is about 60 percent lead by weight, with the rest acid, plastic, and separators, so the per-pound price is a fraction. Wheel weights come with steel clips and, since several states banned lead weights, a growing share of zinc and steel weights that have to be sorted out.

Soft lead (also posted as clean lead) is pure or near-pure: roof flashing, old pipe, sheet, cable sheathing, fishing sinkers, dive weights, ingots. Hard lead is alloyed with antimony for stiffness: linotype, some bullets, battery grids; it pays a little less because the antimony has to be dealt with. Lead-acid batteries are bought whole, by the pound. Wheel weights are their own low line. Range lead (recovered bullets and shot) is often accepted as soft lead if it's free of jackets and dirt, and a few yards won't touch it.

A typical car battery weighs 30 to 45 pounds, so at $0.21 to $0.29 per pound it's worth roughly $7.32 to $10.07 at a yard. Before you haul one, check the core charge: auto parts stores in most states pay a $10 to $25 core refund on a returned battery, which usually beats the scrap price. Yards are the better outlet for batteries in quantity, cracked cases (some refuse them), forklift and industrial batteries, and anywhere a store won't take one without a purchase.

Handle them upright, don't crack the case, and don't drain them. Most states require retailers to accept batteries for recycling and prohibit landfilling them, so a battery is never worth less than free to get rid of.

Lead is toxic by ingestion and by dust. Wear gloves, keep it out of living spaces and away from children, and wash hands and clothes after handling. Don't cut it with a grinder or melt it at home to make ingots; the fumes and dust are the hazard, and yards pay the same for a pile of flashing as for a cast bar. Bag or box small pieces so the yard can weigh them without spilling, and keep wheel weights in a separate bucket with the steel clips on; the yard sorts them.