Brass
Brass is one of the more consistently valuable metals in a typical plumbing or renovation job, and one of the easiest to accidentally under-grade by leaving the wrong attachments on. Here's what actually determines what a brass load is worth.
Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, and the common yellow variety runs roughly 60 to 70% copper and 30 to 40% zinc. That zinc content is what gives brass its bright, golden colour, genuinely distinct from copper's reddish tone and from the duller grey of most steel fittings. It's also a different metal entirely from bronze (copper and tin), the two get confused constantly despite having different compositions and different scrap values.
Brass has been used for plumbing fittings, hardware, and decorative fixtures for generations precisely because it resists corrosion well and machines cleanly, which is also exactly why there's a steady, genuine supply of it moving through renovation, demolition, and manufacturing work across the country.
Brass fittings and valves very rarely arrive as pure brass on their own. Tap fittings, valve bodies, and hardware assemblies routinely ship with steel stems, springs, screws, or fasteners attached, small components doing a real mechanical job, but a completely different metal once it's time to grade and melt the load.
That's exactly why ScrapTrade's Brass category specifies clean material with no iron attachments. Steel left attached to a brass fitting counts as contamination, it can't be processed through the same melt, and a buyer either has to pay someone to strip it out or price the whole load down to account for the extra work. A few minutes with pliers or a screwdriver before listing genuinely protects the value of the load.
Not all brass is the same grade. Red brass carries significantly more copper, often 85% or higher, which gives it a darker, redder appearance and generally a real premium over yellow brass per kilogram, the higher copper content is simply worth more. Plumbing valve bodies and some older fittings are often red brass rather than yellow, worth a second look before assuming everything brass-coloured is the same grade.
ScrapTrade's live-priced Brass category is specifically yellow brass. Genuinely red brass is worth checking and listing separately if you can identify it confidently, describing it accurately gets a more confident offer than an optimistic guess in either direction. Naval brass, sometimes found in boat propellers and marine fittings, is a related but distinct alloy again, worth checking our Marine and Boat Scrap guide if that's where your material came from.
ScrapTrade's live-priced Brass category is specifically clean yellow brass with no iron attachments. Brass pricing tends to track copper fairly closely given how much copper it contains, so checking both reference prices together is worth doing before you list or accept an offer.
Check today's Brass priceBrass volume follows plumbing, renovation, and fabrication activity more than any single industry. Melbourne's large manufacturing and trades base generates a steady stream of brass fittings and offcuts from both new construction and renovation work, while Adelaide's genuine engineering and fabrication industry, alongside its established trades sector, generates real volume of the same kind of material.
Neither city is a requirement. Plumbers, demolition contractors, and manufacturers generate this material anywhere in Australia, and ScrapTrade connects buyers and sellers nationally regardless of where a listing is posted from.
Brass is fully, indefinitely recyclable without any loss of quality, melted and recast brass performs identically to virgin material, which is a large part of why the scrap brass market is so well established and consistently active. Recycling it also avoids the energy cost of mining and refining new copper and zinc from ore, the same underlying saving that makes copper recycling so worthwhile, since brass is mostly copper by weight. A clean, well-sorted load feeds directly back into new fittings and fixtures rather than needing to be down-cycled into a lower-value product.
Brass's value moving closely with copper means it's easy to miss when the market has shifted since you last checked, exactly the gap a lowball offer relies on. On ScrapTrade, you check a live reference price first, then list your load at a fixed price, run it as a live auction so verified buyers compete for it, or negotiate directly, negotiation is on by default on every listing. Every listing is GPS-video verified before it goes live, and payment sits in escrow from the moment a deal is confirmed until pickup or delivery is done, so neither side is exposed first. The full case for why that beats a single yard quote is on Why Choose ScrapTrade and Trust & Safety.
Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, typically around 60 to 70% copper and 30 to 40% zinc for the common yellow variety, and it's the zinc content that gives it that distinctive bright golden colour rather than copper's reddish tone. It's a genuinely different metal from bronze (copper and tin) despite the two often being confused.
Because brass fittings and valves very often ship with steel components attached, stems, springs, screws, or fasteners, and that steel needs to come off before the load is graded. Leaving it in counts as contamination, since a buyer processing brass can't send steel through the same melt.
Copper content, mainly. Yellow brass runs roughly 60 to 70% copper, while red brass carries significantly more, often 85% or higher, giving it a darker, redder colour and generally a higher scrap value per kilogram. ScrapTrade's live-priced Brass category is specifically yellow brass, red brass and bronze are different materials with their own separate values, worth checking and listing correctly rather than guessing.
Plumbing fittings and valves are the biggest everyday source, alongside door and window hardware, decorative fittings, and older musical instrument components. Spent ammunition casings from licensed shooting clubs and ranges are a smaller but genuine source in Australia too, brass is brass regardless of what shape it started life in.
Mainly just removing non-brass attachments, steel stems and fasteners as above, plus any obviously different metal mixed into the same load. Brass doesn't need baling the way lighter materials like cans or cardboard do, its own weight and density make it straightforward to transport as-is.
Plumbers, demolition contractors, manufacturers working with brass fittings, and anyone consolidating genuine volume from renovation or fit-out work. Even a moderate household quantity, old tap fittings from a bathroom renovation, for example, can be a legitimate small listing here, brass doesn't require the same bulk-only scale that packaging materials like cans or bottles do.
Yes, Brass is one of ScrapTrade's live-priced calculator materials. Check today's reference price before you list or accept an offer, brass pricing tracks copper's movements fairly closely given how much copper it contains.
Check a live price, then sell at a fixed price, run an auction, or negotiate directly.
Get Started Free