Scrapping Copper? Know How to Tell the Difference Between Grades
If you are looking to sell copper for cash, you'll need to put a bit of work in to organize the copper by its grade. Here are some tips for telling the difference between the types of copper out there.
Bare Bright
You'll end up getting the most money out of bare bright copper. This is the type of copper that is typically found in wires and needs to be stripped from its casing in order to make the most amount of money from it. Many people who are serious about scrapping metal will have wire stripping machines that do all of the work for them. Once the copper is removed from its casing, the name will make much more sense, since the copper is bare and often looks very bright due to the protective casing that it was in.
One thing to look for to identify bare bright copper is to look at the individual strands of copper within the wire, not the thickness of the cable itself as a whole. Bare bright copper typically has strands of copper that are at least the size of the lead in a pencil. Because copper needs to be melted down in order to recycle it. If the strands are too thin, they tend to vaporize during the melting process. This will end up leaving less copper than what you started with, which is why the thick bare bright copper is worth more money.
#1 and #2 Copper
Any sort of clean copper that does not have solder, paint, or various contaminations on it is considered #1 copper. You'll commonly find this in the form of tubing, pipes, and wires. If the wire is thicker than pencil lead and not very bright, then it loses its classification of bare bright and is called #1 copper. The latter classification is often where people become confused about what the major differences are. In general, if the copper looks dirty it is considered #1 copper.
The remaining copper that has those imperfections from corrosion, paint, and solder is considered #2 copper. It also includes all of those small strands of copper that were not big enough to be considered #1 copper or bare bright copper.
Now that you know how to identify the various types of copper, you can take your sorted metal to copper wire buyers. Contact various recycling services to learn more about copper.
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