Many people like to earn some extra cash by gathering and selling scrap metal. If you want to start collecting and selling scrap metal, then you are going to need to know some things before you get started. That will help you get a head start on the process and help you get the best price possible when you are selling off the metal you have found. 

Check With the Property Owner

Before you go onto any property to gather scrap metal you need to make sure that you have the permission to go through the property and take any scrap metal. If you don't, then you risk charges for trespassing and even worse. It is really easy to talk to the owner, and that will make sure that you aren't going to have any problems later. You may also want to offer the property owner a small payment for whatever you take off the site. Just be aware of the approximate price for the kinds of metal that you will be collecting because you don't want to offer so much money that it cuts into your eventual profit. 

Learn the Different Metals

If you want to make money selling off scrap metal, then one thing you need to be able to do is to tell the metals apart. Not all metals are going to give you the same amount of profit, so you need to be able to look at the metals and know which metals are which pretty quickly. There are various ways that you can tell what kind of metal you are looking at, including the color of the metal, how soft it is, how easily it scratches, and so on and so forth. It will take some time for you to be certain about your classifications, but the more you do it, the more likely you are to be correct most of the time and the faster you are going to be able do your classifications. You can also talk to people at the scrap yard to get tips on how they identify the various metals and do it quickly. 

If you are going to start collecting scrap metal, there are some things that you need to do in order to make sure that you are going to make the most money possible and the most return possible on the investment of your time and energy.