Scrap metal offers a unique opportunity to earn extra income while decluttering your home. Some everyday items contain metals with a high scrap value, making them particularly profitable. Whether you’re renovating, cleaning out your garage, or salvaging materials, identifying these valuable items can help you maximize your earnings. Here’s a guide to the top five items with high scrap value and how to make the most of them.
Many individuals have common scrap items stashed away in their houses that may help them make extra income, such as the items we list below.
Why Are Scrap Metals Valuable?
Scrap metals are prized for their ability to be recycled into new products, reducing waste and conserving resources. Common metals like copper, aluminum, and steel are sought after, while rarer metals such as rhodium, palladium, and platinum command premium prices.
Global market trends influence scrap metal prices and fluctuate daily. To ensure you get the best deal, tools like the iScrap App let you track current prices, compare offers, and locate nearby scrap yards.
Top Items with High Scrap Value
If you don’t know what materials are worth what, you might be wondering what old stuff you should be trying to sell. We’ve put together the top list of 5 things people should consider scrapping for maximum profit:
Air Conditioner Units
Air conditioners are made of various materials, including aluminum, copper, wiring, and electric motors. This includes aluminum fins with copper tubes. These are excellent for scrapping. Clean them by hand to remove all steel contamination from the aluminum and copper for the best value.
Suggested Reading: How Do You Scrap An Air Conditioner?
Catalytic Converters
Catalytic converters contain valuable metals, which gives them tremendous monetary value. This is why they are considered to be among the most precious scrap items. These items include rhodium, palladium, and platinum, which are among the most valuable metals, so they have a high quantity of valuable materials per unit.
Who is paying the most for Cats?
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Cars
Many places are willing to pay a good price for scrap automobiles. This is for a good reason, as scrap yards can get a lot of materials from them, like catalytic converters, engines, and aluminum rims. In general, the larger and heavier your automobile is, the more it will be worth when it’s scrapped. Because heavier and larger automobiles are made of more metal, they are worth more when scrapped for the material.
Car Batteries
Car batteries are made of metals such as lead, cobalt, and nickel that can be recovered when scrapped. Because of this, they are highly valuable.
Most recycling facilities and scrap yards will pay you for each pound of your battery scrap. It is unusual to receive a price per battery. Generally, the heavier the car battery, the higher the price.
Suggested Reading: How To Properly Scrap Car Batteries
Appliances
These items are ideal for making quick money as they’re easy to transport and drop off at a scrap yard. Refrigerators and appliances that use plumbing to operate—like an old water heater—are especially worthy of collecting scraps.
Suggested Reading: How Do You Scrap A Refrigerator?
Scrapping can benefit many individuals as a way to make extra income and declutter. This relatively fast process has a quick turnaround time and is worth considering if you have some items you want to dispose of.
Who Pays The Most For Scrap Metal?
While choosing the best yard can be difficult, there are many ways to go about it. We always recommend using the iScrap App to find what each scrap yard currently pays for metals. This makes it easy to compare prices between yards in your area and what users are reporting for each of them.
Suggested Reading: Tips To Find The Best Scrap Yard Prices
Locating Higher Paying Scrap Yards
Finding the right yards often means looking outside of your neighborhood. Where you (or your local scrap yard) are located greatly influences the prices you see. If you are near the coast or a larger mill, you may see stronger prices, but often enough, we see larger price discrepancies in smaller communities or towns that don’t have the access or infrastructure to accommodate these bigger operations.
Suggested Reading: What Location Has To Do With Scrap Prices
Other Valuable Resources:
