Pay for Your Gas with Your Scrap Metalby Mary Ann Romans | More from this Blogger 06 Aug 2008 12:12 PM
The price of scrap copper has increased from $1 to $3 a pound, while aluminum cans have gone up from 30 cents a pound to 80 cents a pound. Increasingly, frugal people are turning to scrap metal collection to put gas in their cars and pay for the increase in food prices. Collecting scrap metal and then selling it is not as hard as it sounds. You can simply save any aluminum cans you might otherwise recycle and sell those. You can hunt through your garage and home for scrap metal that you can sell. When you are renovating your home, set aside anything that could be sold. Some examples of items that can be sold for scrap metal include pipes, wiring, shower door frames and aluminum window frames. And you can also find discarded scrap metal available for free. How do you find free scrap metal? One sure way is to find out when your area towns are hosting their bulk trash days. Very often you'll find tons of scrap metal that is being tossed out for the garbage collectors. Arrive early the night before, since there will be a lot of competition. You can also cruise around your local area on the night before regular garbage pick up to find items. Farm equipment can yield a lot of scrap metal. Offer to take an old rotting piece of equipment off someone's hands, and you could earn hundreds of dollars. Recycling centers that pay for scrap metal are doing a brisk business right now and more and more of them are popping up all over the country. Some centers even pay for paper. In fact, the price of scrap is so high, that it is sparking thefts in many areas. Several states are addressing the issue with new laws that require the dealers to hold on to items for a set time period to ensure that the items aren't reported missing. In our case, we had a television antenna stolen by a chimney sweep! There is a lot of scrap to be found just around your home. Do you have an old radiator or metal swing set? Turn it in for some extra gas money. Click here for more articles by Mary Ann Romans. Dealing with Unexpected Expenses Unclaimed Funds: You Might Be Rich! 75 Things You Can Do to Save Money 75 Things You Can Do to Save Money (2) Learn more about Mary Ann Romans  Mary Ann Romans is a freelance writer, wife and mother of three children. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, the kids and a 16-pound cat. Relevantfrugal tags User Comments jonesx6 (1606) 06 Aug 2008 12:30 PMWhen our boys where younger my husband was able to get scrap metal from work. I remember one night stripping rubber, or something like that, and taking the cooper out of it. Back in the mid-90's we would get over a hundred dollars. Not to bad. Groceries, diapers, etc. Laura Tashi (1013) 06 Aug 2008 05:37 PMToo bad I never saved my orthodontic work after it was removed years ago. ;-) Mary Ann, were you ever able to get the antenna back, and did you confront the chimney sweep or his/her employer about the theft?  Mary Ann Romans |
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