Valuation
How we value surplus cable.
Five things decide what a lot of cable is worth: footage, conductor, insulation and voltage, condition, and documentation. Metal content sets the floor, not the price.
Call or text the buying desk954-740-1983
Footage basisTag, then weight
Metal floorCopper or aluminium
ConditionDecides material vs scrap
DocumentationRaises the number
Get a buy quote
Send the reel list. A buyer reads it.
Six details are enough to start. Tags and photos can follow by text or email once a buyer has looked at the basics.
- A buyer reviews the lot: construction, footage and condition, not only metal weight
- Copper and aluminium, 600 V building wire through 345 kV cable
- Full reels, partial reels, cut lengths, pallets and truckloads
- No fee, no obligation, and no automatic pickup
Reel list · Valuation
Reviewed by a buyerTell us what you have and where it sits. Nothing is moved until written lot terms are agreed.
Sellers usually expect the conversation to start with weight. It starts with the tag, because a tagged reel has a known quantity and a known construction, and both of those are worth more than an estimate.
This page is the method, written out, so you can predict the number before you call and argue with it if it looks wrong.
01
Footage: the tag, then the scale
A mill tag states the length at manufacture. If the reel has been partly used, the remaining length is either counted off the counter, measured, or estimated from weight. Each step down in certainty costs something, because the buyer is carrying the risk of being wrong.
Where there is no tag, we weigh the reel, subtract the reel itself, and divide by the published weight per thousand feet for that size and construction. On a large reel the estimate is tight; on a small one it is not.
02
Conductor: size, strand and metal
Copper and aluminium are different markets and different prices, and the difference is not small. Aluminium is bought on volume and cleanliness; copper is bought on grade. Stranding matters too, because fine-strand welding cable and coarse-strand feeder do not recover the same way.
- Copper: bright, untinned, clean cut ends, no corrosion at the exposed conductor
- Aluminium: alloy identified where possible, no mixed-alloy coils
- Strand: compact and concentric for feeder, fine strand for welding and portable
- Size: from 14 AWG branch wire to 2000 kcmil bus and 1590 kcmil line conductor
03
Insulation and voltage class
The jacket is the second half of the asset. Thermoplastic building wire is commodity. Cross-linked polyethylene, EPR, fire-rated constructions and paper-insulated lead-covered cable are not, and they are priced against what they can still be used for.
Voltage class changes handling as much as value. Above 2 kV the cable is shielded, the terminations are engineered, and the documentation requirement goes up.
04
Condition, and what kills a lot
Sun is the quiet killer in this climate. Ultraviolet light chalks and cracks a jacket that has sat outside for two summers, and a cracked jacket turns material into scrap. Water ingress at an open end wicks down the conductor. Crushed reels and broken flanges make handling expensive.
The other killer is mixing. One pallet holding four sizes and two metals has to be sorted before it can be valued, and sorting is labour.
05
Documentation, and why it pays
A surviving tag, a submittal reference, a de-energisation record or a mill certificate all reduce uncertainty, and reduced uncertainty is the only thing that reliably raises a number. Facilities and utility lots often have this paperwork already. Residential lots rarely do.
Photographs are documentation too, if they are the right photographs. The tag, the reel face, the jacket print, the cut end, the stack.
Questions
Answers before you send anything.
If your question is not here, call the desk. A buyer answers, not a call centre.
Does clean copper cable get a better number than dirty?
Yes. Mud, corrosion and mixed debris all reduce recovery, and the reduction is passed on. Hosing a reel down before pickup is usually not worth it; keeping it dry and off the ground is.
Why is a partial reel worth less than a full reel of the same conductor?
Because the remaining footage is less certain and the reel is harder to place with an industrial user. The per-foot number falls, even though the metal is identical.
What about cable with the jacket stripped off?
That is bare conductor and priced as such, usually higher per pound than jacketed cable and lower than clean bright copper of the same gauge.
Can you value a lot from photographs alone?
Yes, with a range rather than a firm number, and the range narrows fast when the tag is legible and the reel count is exact.
Keep reading
Related pages
No fee · no obligation
You have the cable. We have a scale and a check.
Send the reel list, the tags or a photograph of the pallet. A buyer comes back with what the lot is worth and how pickup would work, before anything is moved.
954-740-1983 Call or text
- Reel tags, or the print on the jacket
- Reel count and footage, even roughly
- Where it sits and what can reach it
- Whether the cable is still energised