There are many types of brass out there, recycling it might be tricky, if you are trying to get the most money for it. Of course there is clean brass, that pretty much is split in to two most common types in recycling, red brass and yellow brass. Brass is an alloy, there for has a mixture of different metals two major once are aluminum and copper, yellow brass has less copper in it and a bit less in price then red brass, and yes you guessed it right red brass is red because it has more copper in it there for its reddish color and more valuable. The difference between the two is on the average about $00.30 per lb.
Then there is a lot of contaminated brass mostly in plumbing industry and that’s where it gets more complex, in recycling terminology this brass is called plumbing brass.
Plumbing brass could be both yellow or red and contaminated with stainless steel, rubber, plastic, steel, die cast etc.
In that case you could either strip all the materials off and sell it for what it is or just sell it as plumbing brass. Cleaning brass is very time consuming process and in most cases not worth the money. By the time you clean and sort your plumbing brass you might easily end up with up to 30% of other much less expensive materials. So in most cases bring it to recycling yard that specializes in that type of purchases (not every recycling yard does) and try to negotiate the best deal on your material, if you are dealing with someone who is familiar with that type of brass it should be very easy to get a fair number.
