I like Charles' idea. That's the way I think.

I din't know about palladium. I sometimes go to a Ft. Lauderdale junk yard and every car gets the converter cut off which made me mad as hell when I needed one for my old BMW! I finally got the 7" crack welded very nicely. The junk yard guys are typical in lack of knowledge and they cut anything off the exhaust that might be a converter and ruin many used exhaust systems that could help hard working people who can't afford new stuff. New catalytic converters are temporary junk unless they are factory replacements. I bet most of those aftermarket converters don't even have palladium in them. Lower quality manufacturers seem to get away with murder quite often.

This was mentioned in a forum for electricians. That scrap yards in CA get a reward around a $1K from the power company for turning in anyone who shows up with power company wire. That the scrap yard knows what power company telephone pole wire looks like.

Heard that some scrap wire gets sent to China or other countries that don't have an EPA so that the locals set the stuff on fire to burn off the insulation.

A few years ago I had a moderately large quantity of old 50 conductor phone cable I tossed into the recycling bucket along with the soda cans. The recyclier picked it up, was a bit unsure what to do, but took it anyway. My town does "comingled" recycling. Sometimes I'll strip apart dead VCRs and such, and toss the plastic cabinet and steel frames in with the soda and soup cans and glass jars in the recycling bucket.

Hope they don't find out about the gold in Zenith tuners.

I forgot about that!
We need to screen the new members and ban any potential scrappers from this inside info!

I apologize for not being more careful in how I speak of those who are not fortunate enough to have been educated properly as those ignorant people were once children who were not properly tended to and it is understandable for them to risk thier lives to feed themselves and thier children.

No offense taken! Climbing a phone pole to steal the copper wire is not only grand theft, it is vandalism, and could easily be manslaughter if they cut the power to a house with a person in a breathing machine, or if they cut the phone lines so someone dies because they can't get an ambulance.

"poop for brains" is a VERY kind way to put it in fact!

Charles

Guys who are so low to steal copper power lines deserve getting zapped, IMHO. Look around you-the are 17 bazillion Mexicans here ! Why do they come here ? FOR THE JOBS !! Get off yer lazy arse, get a job, & then you WON'T have to steal copper wire to survive...

busted crts
 

I fix up and sell used appliances in addition to working a regular job. It has been harder to find them also. The junk collectors are snapping them up and selling them for scrap. I have a couple of places I get them from and I have to call about every other day to see if they have anything or it will be gone in no time. If the junk guys see them out back they just grab them. Sometimes the stores plan to fix them up themselves. I always ask before taking them. I cant see how they are making any money doing this with gas at 3.00 a gallon. Makes me mad. I want to say go get a job like the rest of us.
John.

For awhile there, I guess it was late 90s or so, I could not give scrap metal away & had to start paying a man to take it. It wasn't worth the price of gas to haul it up to the yard. Now the scrap man stops by once or twice a week just hoping I have something. I recently wanted a cheap bicycle and he had 3 on the truck-2 of them had nothing wrong with them, just jump on them and ride! I had to give him 5 bucks for the group. One of the scrap metal buyers called me the other day practically begging me to let him come down and haul my stuff away, and he would pay me for it to boot. Well, he wasn't around a few years back so the old gentleman who showed up when it was worthless still gets it.

Don't forget that was when gas was lest then $1.50 per gallon

I wish that aluminum cans would be worth more... And newspapers. I save our cans, and when I haul a pickup truck full of (un-crushed) cans in plastic bags down to the recycler, I get about $40. That's for about 150 lbs of cans, which take us a couple years to accumulate. Seems to me that the year's effort and storage is worth more than $40.

Charles