When Will The Scrap Prices Go Up?

Posted: January 20, 2026

We have been asked a lot of questions about the price of different scrap metals from copper…especially to questions about iron and steel. And unfortunately here is not an easy answer to this question. If we knew when the prices were going to go up we would love to not only pass that information on…but we would be saving metals ourselves!

China Is A Large Factor In Prices

With the world markets all over the place it is going to very difficult to guess or predict when the markets are going to be increasing. One of the largest factors attributing to the metal prices falling has been the uncertainty in China. The Chinese and many other Asian economies have dropped down over the last few years and that has caused a major disruption in the metals industry.

Gas Prices Affect Scrap Metal

Now take the falling gas prices (which is great for our wallets when filling our cars!), but is very bad for the metals prices. Inexpensive gas and fuel prices will mean that other prices will drop as a result and metals have been one of those results.

Scrap prices go down for many different reasons, and it is hard for us to know when or how much they will decrease. Scrap metal prices are like stocks…they go up, down, stay the same, but one thing that they always do is continue to surprise us.

Historical Changes In Scrap Prices

Prices are affected by a lot of different factors in the US and the world. Sometimes (like back in the early to mid 2000’s) prices have large upswings because the entire world goes under a massive development where manufacturing and new industries are all over the place. Now in the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016 the prices are really slumping and because of that we are seeing all scrap metal prices, especially steel, really slumping.

We have instituted a strict 500 pound minimum for all of the purchases of steel that we have right now because of the low value…you are welcome to bring the material down to be recycled, but with the prices where they are you have to guess that it still costs a lot of money to move the material around and right now it just doesn’t pay enough for us to pay you.

It is a weird thought that metals have dipped so low, but there is no magic ball that will let you know when the prices are jumping back up so you just have to deal with where they are.

Don’t forget you can always check out pricing page for our daily updated scrap metal prices.

Current Scrap Metal Prices at Rockaway Recycling

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