Copper Grades Explained: Telling Bright Wire, Mixed Wire, and Burnt Wire Apart

Copper is where the gap between what you could have gotten and what you actually got tends to be biggest, because the price difference between grades is large and the visual difference between them is small to an untrained eye. Learning the three grades that matter most at Shershah takes about five minutes and can be worth thousands of rupees on a real load.

Grade A: bright, bare wire

Stripped copper wire with no insulation, no coating, no oxidation, no solder. It should look properly bright, a warm orange-pink, not dulled or darkened anywhere. This is the highest price of any common copper scrap because the buyer can re-smelt it with no further processing.

The tell that wire has been misclassified as Grade A when it isn't: any green or black tarnish, any scrap of plastic insulation left at the ends, or a dull brownish cast instead of a proper shine. Even light oxidation across a large coil gets the whole lot re-graded down, so it pays to keep bare wire out of the rain rather than leave it sitting exposed before you sell.

Grade B: mixed or coated wire

Wire with some insulation still attached, wire that's been tinned or coated, or bright wire mixed with a bit of lower-grade material. It sells for 10-20% less than Grade A, though the exact gap moves with the market, because the buyer now has to pay to strip or process it before it's usable.

Most household and workshop copper scrap (old extension cords, motor windings, appliance wiring) falls here by default unless someone's already stripped it. If you have time to strip the insulation yourself first, it's usually worth doing. The labour is simple, and the jump to Grade A pricing is normally worth more than the time it costs you.

Burnt wire and whole cable

Wire burned to remove insulation, rather than stripped mechanically, oxidizes in the process and loses value for it. Burning can also melt or vaporize some of the copper itself, which is part of why buyers discount it further than mixed wire. Whole insulated cable that hasn't been touched gets graded separately again, priced closer to its copper content than its raw weight, since the buyer is the one paying to strip it at volume.

Don't burn cable yourself before bringing it in. The price bump is smaller than most people expect, it's the reason so much cable scrap turns up visibly charred and gets pushed to the bottom of the pricing tier anyway, and the fumes from burning insulated wire are bad to breathe. Bringing it in unburned and letting the buyer strip it mechanically usually nets more money and is just safer.

Sorting your own load before you go

Split what you have into three piles at home: bright bare wire, anything with insulation or coating still on, and anything burnt or heavily oxidized. Weigh each pile on its own if you can. You'll get an accurate blended quote instead of one "average" rate for the whole mixed lot, and showing up already sorted tells the buyer you know what you're doing, which is worth something in a market built on negotiation.