When a car or home stereo goes bad, rather than throw it out, it's worth the effort to take it apart at least a little bit and get at some of the potentially valuable scrap metal inside. In this post, we'll give you some tips and tricks to make the process of dismantling a stereo easier. Metals such as copper and even gold (in small amounts) are often available inside stereos, and even the wiring and motherboards can have significant value.
Scrap copper is one of our customers' favorite metals to hunt for, because it's always in high demand. Even non-scrappers know that copper is a consistently valuable material. One of the most common ways to find copper is in the form of copper wire.
There’s a reason copper is one of the most frequently recycled metals at scrap facilities like Encore Recyclers. It’s pretty much the most valuable per-pound metal that you can frequently find in large quantities. However, it’s a lot easier to find if you know where to look—so here are the top five places to find scrap copper.
Spoiler alert: NO! We saw a disturbing video of a man advocating the burning of insulated copper wire, purportedly to qualify the wire as Copper #2, which brings a higher sale value when sold as scrap than insulated wire. Please don't do this.
