223/556 brass once fired-price to sell?

W

woody wood

New member
Got a range member at my club looking to buy some brass from there. He's looking for 308 and 5.56/223. Once fired mixed brass for both mostly federal uncleaned, what is the going price per thousand? I have 2 5 gallon pails of mostly lake city brass, just trying to figure out how to price it out.whats going price?
 
Hobo Kelly's Blue Book of Brass Values

High-end: Is New LC 18 unprimed, unfired, $160 per thousand. 1k Starline are $342.
https://www.midsouthshooterssupply....outh-bulk-brass&itemsperpage=30&currentpage=1
High-mid: Is GIBrass.com (AKA Jeff Bartlett, and, Bartlett Reloaders $75 per thousand (temporarily out of stuck). Looks like he stopped processing primer pockets as an add on service. This is real deal once fired LC military training ammo.
Mid-Mid: Is brass of opportunity and unknown history, desert pickup where someone was shooting LC. $0.00 per thousand. I did this and got 3-4 loadings of 55 gr FMJ over WC844 practice ammo loadings before retiring this banged up brass. None failed or cracked.
Low-mid: Top-brass fully processed $142 per thousand but it is MIXED headstamps. I bought a pack of 50 in 7.62; best use will be Annealing learning stock. I will not buy again at any price.
Low-mid: Is Federal. Many reloaders will give it to you for $0.00 per thousand plus the cost of shipping/postage. I have about 1 thousand, but aM not going to spend any time looking for and counting it, and packaging it.
Bottom-end: Is scrap brass value by the pound, if you have a buyer.

My advice is buy the new LC, or buy from Jeff Bartlett. Jeff@GIBRASS.com. As to value of your LC, if it is real, crimped in primers, and unprocessed and not cleaned, $40 per thousand, but that is if you have a buyer and seller. In other words, buyer and seller determine market price. But there is no standard going rate.
That $40 is around half of the $75 commercial trade standard (Bartlett).
 
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If that's unsorted range brass, who knows whats going to be in there... but I would think $30-40/1K (or 14#) would be reasonable, knowing it would have to be fully sorted and processed. Just make sure the buyer understands the primer pockets will have to be swaged on some of it, for sure.... some people are not set up for that.
 
Top-brass fully processed $142 per thousand but it is MIXED headstamps. I bought a pack of 50 in 7.62; best use will be Annealing learning stock. I will not buy again at any price.
Click to expand...

Marco... I agree. I bought 2 1K lots of processed 7.62mm and it has been nothing but terrible. I'm in the process of culling it all out of my stash and scrapping it. After this episode, I'll only use MY once-fired, processed brass for 7.62mm.
 
Kind of hard to say. You might offer it to one guy for $75 a thousand and he thinks he got a great deal, I'd say he probably got a good deal. Next guy come along and thing's you full of it, not near worth that much. Both guy's are right! The question is what's it worth to you? problem is you have two five gal bucket's of brass sitting around doing nothing for the next 40 yrs because everyone think's you want to much or the guy that doesn't doesn't have the money right now. if you sit on it long enough, it'll bring scrap prices! So what's it worth to you? I have no use for 223/5.56 brass so I wouldn't invest squat in it. but go to one of the online dealer's and see what they are getting. Seems the last bunch of military brass I got came cleaned! Don't remember what I paid though, 308 LC brass is what it was.
 
I just noticed you were asking about BOTH 308 and 223. To convert 223 values to 308 multiply by TWO. To convert 308 to 223 values divide by TWO.
2 .223 = 1 .308.
I will say, if they are mixed calibers, you should separate by calibers, then headstamp and Year. Hope for common source versus random discards/pickups. If they are widely mixed makers and mixed commercial and military, and years, then I do not think it has any value beyond scrap, and is not worth handling.
In 308 / 7.62 in particular, case weights, volumes and alloy used vary a lot. One of the first things I learned about reloading was to keep headstamps separated and load them as groups (all R-P; all LC year and year x, plus x+1), In this 308 chambering that is more true than any other chambering. Conversely, 223 is more or less homogenous across commercial and military. 223 varys much less. But I still keep headstamps separated, and grouped
All the values I discussed above in #2 were for 223 / 5.56
 
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