I had about a dozen batteries I was collecting that I was going to rip out the terminals and scrap the bodies...when I got around to it. My son-in-law came by one day to do a little clean-up and assumed I wanted them gone, so without telling me he recycled them.
He got nearly $200 for the bunch. That's equivalent to about 200# of lead scrap if purchased from the same recycler, and the battery terminals would only have been about 20#, so as it turns out, he had the right idea.
I still hassle him about it though...
I just took a few batteries to a scrap yard. I should've taken them to the local Autozone instead as they pay about $10 each and the scrap yard only paid 5 cents a pound.
I did make out pretty well with a couple hundred pounds of scrap copper I took back, though, leaving the yard with a check for nearly $500.