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Start with a clean cut
The colour of the outside tells you very little. Cut the cable with a hacksaw or side cutters and look at the fresh face of the conductor.
| What you see | What it is |
|---|---|
| Reddish-orange, same colour all the way through | Copper |
| Silver-grey, same colour all the way through | Aluminium |
| Silver outside, red-orange when scratched | Tinned copper |
| Copper-coloured skin with a silver core | Copper-clad aluminium (CCA) |
| Silver strands around a core that attracts a magnet | Steel-reinforced aluminium (ACSR) |
Three quick checks that settle most doubts
- The scratch test. Scrape a strand with a knife. Tinned copper shows red-orange underneath. Aluminium stays silver all the way through.
- The weight test. Copper is roughly three times heavier than aluminium of the same size. Two similar pieces of the same gauge feel obviously different in the hand.
- The magnet test. Neither copper nor aluminium is magnetic. If a magnet sticks, there is steel in the cable, as a core or as armour.
Watch out for copper-clad aluminium
CCA is common in cheap network cables, speaker wire and some low-cost house wiring. It has a thin copper coating over an aluminium core, so it looks like copper at a glance.
It is not paid as copper. Recovering the thin copper layer is not practical, so CCA is usually priced close to aluminium. Put it in with genuine copper and you lower the grade of the whole bag. Always cut and check suspicious cable, especially anything marked "CCA" or unusually light for its size.
Stripped vs insulated: why it matters so much
Insulated cable is priced on how much metal is inside, called the recovery. Thick insulation on thin wire may contain only a small share of copper by weight. Thin insulation on heavy wire contains much more.
- Bare bright copper (clean, stripped, no coating or burn marks) gets the highest rate.
- Insulated copper cable is priced at a fraction of that, depending on the recovery.
- Burnt copper is paid less than clean stripped copper. Burning damages the surface and leaves residue. Open burning of cable is also illegal and toxic, so do not do it.
Thick cable is usually worth stripping. Thin multi-core wire often is not, and is better sold as insulated cable.
How to sort a mixed cable pile
- Separate copper and aluminium first. This single step makes the biggest difference.
- Pull out anything with steel (armoured cable, ACSR) and keep it separate.
- Keep CCA in its own bag, never mixed with copper.
- Split copper into stripped and insulated.
- Remove plugs, lugs and connectors. Brass terminals and plastic plugs are separate materials.
- Keep it dry, and bundle each type separately.
See also: Ferrous vs non-ferrous: telling them apart.
How we buy cable. We cut samples in front of you, show you the conductor, and tell you which grade we are paying for. If part of your copper bag is actually CCA, we show you which pieces rather than marking the whole bag down.
Have cable or wire to sell?
Send photographs of the cut ends and a rough weight for each type. We buy across Thiruvallur and nearby towns.