BUSINESS IS BOOMING AT SCRAP YARDS - TIME TO SELL YOUR OLD CAR 4 Mar, 2013 Scrap Metal Investment With the uncertainty of the US budget crisis in the midst of a down economy, selling off junk cars and other large appliances for scrap metal has become an interesting endeavor in terms of investments and portfolio diversification. As the price of both scrap and precious metals are on the rise, there is increasing activity at all levels of the supply chain with an interest in acquiring scrap for money. Industry Makeup The beginning of the supply chain can be a crude and grueling enterprise. Men and women across the United States wake up at very early hours of the morning to travel to different communities in search of unwanted metals in garbage bins, storage units, public property, or left out on the side of the road for pickup. These metal hunters have been coined as "scrappers", ending their days at dusk by traveling to junkyards that offer cash for specific types of metal and other materials. In the UK, these are known as "scrapyards" while in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand they are referred to as "wrecking yards". Junkyards will store, crush, and compact purchased metals and then re-sell them to firms that specialize in reforming. Reforming the metals often involves melting them to their original form, and then reproducing them into different products. Many of these products are reintroduced to the market, and often wind up back in junkyards, cycling through the industry. As a result, the metal scrap industry is one of the most highly recycled in the world. According to a report, "Business is booming at scrap yards, where recycling and metal dealers are seeing a growing number of homeowners and non-traditional clients making the extra trip to cash in their used bikes, old tools and discarded soda cans. The scrap yards also have their share of regular customers, including contractors, who consider what they expect to earn in scraps when they bid for a job, and peddlers, who drive around retrieving metal discards." Indeed, a common junkyard in any given American city or town can net $3 for an old bike, $20 for the copper parts inside of an old air conditioning unit, $40 for a cast iron bathtub, and a few hundred dollars for an old automobile.