Copper is the most valuable common scrap metal, but not all copper wire is priced the same — grade makes a real difference to what you’re paid. Here’s how to tell the grades apart before you sell.
Bright wire
Stripped, clean copper with no coating, insulation, or corrosion. This is the highest-value grade. Despite the name, freshly stripped bright wire usually isn’t shiny — it’s typically a dull pinky-orange colour. Genuinely shiny wire has usually just been stored indoors and kept from oxidising.
No.1 copper
Clean, unalloyed copper — pipes, tubing, bus bars — with no coating, solder, or paint. Slightly below bright wire in value, but still a premium grade.
No.2 copper
Copper with some surface oxidation, minor coating, or slight impurities. Still clearly copper and still valuable, just graded down from No.1 due to the extra processing a buyer needs to do.
Braziery
Mixed copper items — fittings, small components, brazed joints — that don’t cleanly sort into the grades above. Still worth selling, but priced lower due to the mixed composition.
Insulated cable
Copper wire still inside its plastic insulation. Worth considerably less per kilo than stripped bright wire, since the buyer has to strip it themselves — but often still worth more overall if you don’t have the time or tools to strip it yourself.
Why grading matters to your payout
A few minutes spent separating grades before you sell — stripping cable where practical, keeping bright wire separate from braziery — can genuinely change what a load is worth. Mixed, ungraded copper gets priced at the lowest common grade in the load, not an average.
List your copper by grade and let verified buyers quote against it. Sell copper scrap on ScrapBays →