price of lead

[shaper]

Was talking with a friend about lead and he said he had to pay $2. per pound for it. I went to the local metal scrap yard that I buy from. If I sell lead to them it will be .25 cents per pound. If i buy from them it will be .75 cents per pound. But they didn't have any and hadn't had any for some time now.
so what is the price in your area?

[dangitgriff]

Lead is currently trading at $0.84/lb on the commodities markets.

http://www.kitcometals.com/

Hope this helps.
—Griff

[rancher1913]

none of the scrap yards around here will sell lead to the public, there is 2 little scrap yards I have been buying from for a while and they will stil sell to me but they very seldom have any. seems the price of lead has been creeping up lately.

[centershot]

There are two scrapyards here in town, only one will sell to the public. They buy for $.40/lb. and charge $1.00/lb. for what I buy from them.

[toallmy]

I would pick up dirty lead at my local scrap yard for .60 per pound , but a year or so ago the dealer put it up to 1.
a pound so I stopped buying it . I figured after melting it , and cleaning it up I would be better off buying clean ingot lead from members here , but I pick up wheel weights for 25.-30 . dollar a bucket and do a seasonal cook off in the spring and fall . Most of my casting is done with a 50/50 mix soft / coww . I get tin or pewter from members here most of the time but I don't use a lot of it - so a mix of 50/50 + 1 gives me quite a bit of alloy with very little added expense .
After buying a few bags of hard shot my casting alloy seams like a reasonable expense .

[Walla2]

Just yesterday I paid 10 cents a pound. That is the first I have bought from the scrapyard in years.

[Scrounge]

Was talking with a friend about lead and he said he had to pay $2. per pound for it. I went to the local metal scrap yard that I buy from. If I sell lead to them it will be .25 cents per pound. If i buy from them it will be .75 cents per pound. But they didn't have any and hadn't had any for some time now.
so what is the price in your area?

I bought some lead pipe for $1/lb a few weeks ago. None lately.

[rcslotcar]

My local reloading shop has various lead items (old bullets, w/w, and ingots) in a cart to select from @ 1.00 #

[reddog81]

I've seen a wide variety of prices. I've seen people on Craigslist trying to sell for up to $5 a pound and the stuff sits for a long time. Usually I see stuff sell for the $1 to $2 range. I buy if it's around $1.00 to 1.25. I picked up 600+ lbs of old wheel weights for $200 about 1 month ago. It netted a little over 300 lbs of lead but it took a couple hours of sorting and smelting to get usable lead.

I asked about buying range scrape from the local indoor range and they said they sell theirs for $2.00 per lbs to some guy who casts fishing weights. You can get ingots delivered to your door for less than that...

If I see some at a good price, I try and buy it all. I've called a number for the scrap yards in the area and they don't sell to the public.

[Conditor22]

here they buy for 25¢ and sell for $1.50.
they have tons of soft lead (roof flashing, valleys, pipe jacks, occasional lead pipe) rarely do I find the harder lead.

My last good purchase from a scrapyard was 3/4 ton of monotype for 80¢ a pound. He asked me how much I wanted, I thought for a while :) (not to look too interested) then bought it ALL :bigsmyl2::cbpour:

[bedbugbilly]

For years, I was able to buy lead from one of the two scrap yards in the closest city to the mall town I lived near (in MI). The majority of it was soft lead cable sheathing - greasy and dirty - cut in sections and flattened and great for my purposes. Smelt it down and pour ingots. All of a sudden, the source dried up and the scrap yard would no longer sell lead to the public. A couple of years ago, when my wife and I moved into a condo form the farm, I got acquainted with a nice young plumber and had him do some work. I was talking with him about casting as he saw my reloading bench in the garage and I asked him what he did with his scrap lead from jobs - cast iron soil pipe caulking, etc. - he said he saved it and sold it for scrap. In talking further, he said that the "powers that be" had really clamped down on lead and even leaded brass fittings. I told him I would buy whatever scrap lead he had at the market price - he was afraid that he could get in trouble if he sold it to the public. Now, every so often, I get a "call"" that he will be in my area and I should check my door step. He doesn't accumulate a lot but every little bit helps. I recently bought 60# of soft lead from a member here - in small ingot form - and delivered it figured out to $1.33 / pound. I felt it was a very fair and reasonable price for ingot form - all ready smelted and ready to go for BP projectiles.

Regardless of the "commodity price" - in some locations it's got to depend on supply and demand and whatever the local market will bear - no different than anything else.

[fatelk]

If I had to pay $2/lb, casting would not be worth my time, and I'd sell all my molds. Life gets so busy that sometimes I think about doing that even with free lead. I get mine off the berm at the range, and have plenty. If I didn't have access to that, I'd probably buy from the sellers here, as they seem to be the most reasonable source of lead.

[GOPHER SLAYER]

I have never bought any lead. As a telephone company employee I had access to all the lead I would ever need. When I retired I made sure I had enough forever. I even gave away several hundred pounds rather than moving it to our new home. I knew a supervisor who bought a large casting rig and kept all the gun shops supplied with cast bullets. The only overhead he paid for was electricity. When he retired he sold the casting equipment.

[rockrat]

Here, I think its buy for 10 cents and sell for a dollar

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

Last batch of scrap yard lead I bought was 60¢ a lb (I bought all he had, it was 453 lbs)...I paid half in cash and half in scrap brass/copper...and my stash of spent primers. Most of the lead was pure dimensional lead, some plumbing lead from cast iron pipes, there was some "unknown" alloy (bullets and fishing weights), there was some solder mixed in there too.

[dbosman]

My local metal recycler sells hard lead for fifty cents a pound. Softlead is a dollar a pound. All they had for soft lead was X-Ray room lead. ;-) I feel so bad that I can't have all of it. ;-)
Hard lead was electrical cable scrap with the copper wires inside still. Render the lead, strip the insulation, sell the copper back later.

[Lloyd Smale]

what I found with scrap yards is they try to price lead high but if im buying a couple hundred lbs and make them a FAIR offer they usually jump. Lead is very heavy for volume like we all know and for them to transport it cost them a lot more then hauling steel or aluminum so if they can get you to haul it your doing them a favor. Go into the scrap yard with that in mind.

[FISH4BUGS]

I have no idea what lead costs. I still have some 1500 lbs or so of wheel weights (free when a friend sold his tire shop) and 250 lbs of linotype and 150 lbs of stick on ww's. I think I am all set for a while. :)

[marek313]

Last time I went to local scrap yard I found out that its $1.25 now. Cleaning and smelting this dirty lead doesnt make sense anymore. Instead I started buying clean ingots for $1.50 which makes more sense to me. I will now only smelt what i get for free and buy the rest.

[slim1836]

I still pick up wheel weights when I see them, save them until I have enough for a rendering session. I don't go out of my way to secure sources anymore as I have enough to last my lifetime and don't want the wife to have to dispose a lot of it later. I love this hobby but my wife could care less.

Slim

[lightman]

I seldom pay for lead but a few years ago I paid 40 cents a pound for sorted wheel weights and 70 cents a pound for his ingots. We bought 5600 pounds! I posted up some smelting pictures then. I'll still buy it when I find it cheap.