Lots of smaller scrap places do that, leave stuff in the alley etc. The trouble is that many scavengers strip the item and leave a mess, ie screws all over. Isn't there some kind of industry wide price list for scrap? Most of the time seems to me the haggling isn't over the price, but what grade your junk is. Buying stuff you have to hit the happy medium, offer too much and you make people curious, offer too little and it isn't worth their time. My most recent purchase has been insulated wire, first batch was a mix of misc wire, cat 5, and some computer cables with connectors. We started at $1.50/lb, but I found a bunch of stuff in the pile so I ended up with 40 lbs, and talked the guy down to $1/lb. Second batch was 180 lbs of wire on spools, mostly 20 guage hookup wire, at the same $1/lb. The way I figure it now we paid a premium on the first batch (lower grade scrap), and got a steal on the second, but in actual value terms to me the first batch was worth more than the second per pound. I've seen companies go both ways on scrapping stuff to get it off the books. The hardline view is that stuff must be trashed and not recovered, but in almost all BIGGER operations selling stuff as scrap is the normal practice. I gotta figure a lot of times the Monday after some hard nose dumps all the old stuff and puts a lock on the trash bins, that there boss does a You Did What!