Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting Lead Price?

What is pure soft lead going for lately. Got a pile of it. All in small ingots, forget if they are half pound or pound. Also a bunch of lead fishing weights also pure lead. All clean ready to melt down. Need to haul it all out and take inventory. But I got around three or four fifty caliber ammo cans I believe. Also what have been experiences shipping USPS flat rate? I heard they can get pissy about extremely heavy boxes if you have a bunch of extra tape on them. Thanks

Tape them up good and stay just under their maximum allowed weight and you’re good to go. They can get pissy all they want!

I don’t know what the actual market says but I’ve seen it around $1/lb lately, and just bought 50lbs if clean “range scrap” ingots for $60 shipped. I feel like that’s fair.

Steve

Yeah, a buck a pound give or take seems to be the going rate for soft lead. Figure a 50% premium for hard antimony/tin rich alloys.

As for shipping, a simple trick to reinforce a medium flat rate box is to line the sides, top, and bottom with 3/8" plywood glued together with small quarter rounds. Adds immensely to the integrity of the package and takes up little space and weight. Tape the outside with fibre backed tape also and it'll survive the worst handling. I've bought lead packed like this that journeyed cross country and arrived pristine. One guy shipped 50 pounds to me in a simple mfrb with just tape and it had split open causing the PO to halfassed re-tape it. They were not happy.

I ship my lead like Gnoahh says, only I use pieces of an old weathered excess 2x4 for a frame. I screw the plywood to the frame to make a floor and then put another piece of the sheet for a lid. I use duct tape for a hinge. I still reinforced the shipping box with shipping tape but as long as the total weight does not exceed 70 lbs you are good to go.

I paid 40c a lb at a scrap yd a few months ago.IIRC

Clean lead in ingot form should bring $1 a pound shipped, maybe $1.25. I save old boxes and line the new flat rate box with cardboard and then pack it so that the contents can't move. Add lots of tape to the outside. You could also put 6 small flat rate boxes into a medium box. I save used boxes for this.

I stuff a medium flat rate box inside a medium flat rat box and cut off the top flaps of the inner box. Tape the heck out of it. I have even made a tape handle for the PO folks to use. I am friends with them at our rural PO. They do a good job and I try to make their job a little easier.

Dona Ana? Good folks there.

Kitco metals for commodity pricing.

http://www.kitcometals.com/charts/Lead.html

I have a couple 100 pounds of lead Some in bigger chunks.Some in ingots. If you are near Colorado Sprinsg we could probably make a deal.PM if interested

I worked in a deep underground lead/zinc/silver mine in the 90's and back then lead was around 17 cents per pound. The ore was super heavy beyond what normal rock weighs.

Theres an exposed vein of silver and lead on the freeway roadcut not far from me. You can literally peel off chunks of galena lead sulfides.

if you want to ship lead, get small flat rate boxes and med flat rate boxes.

5 small flat rate boxes, will fit inside one med flat rate box. tape and glue as needed.

free shipping supplies.