Bright & shiny copper
Bright & shiny copper — sometimes called bright wire — is the highest-paying everyday copper grade. It's clean, uncoated, unalloyed copper wire with a bright, shiny finish, usually the result of stripping insulation from cable.
QUALIFIES AS
- • Bright, shiny stripped copper wire
- • Thicker than around 1.6mm (no hair-thin wire)
- • No coatings, tinning or alloy
- • Free of any insulation or attachments
DROPS A GRADE IF
- • It's tinned or coated (that's a different grade)
- • It's tarnished, oxidised or burnt
- • It still has insulation attached
- • It's mixed with thinner gauge wire
How to prepare it
Keep bright copper completely separate from everything else. Don't let it tarnish in a damp bag, and never burn cable to recover copper — burnt wire is downgraded and burning insulation is illegal in most areas. For heavy-gauge cable, mechanical stripping usually pays for itself by moving the copper into this top grade.
Not quite this clean? It may grade as No. 1 copper or No. 2 copper.
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