This one time I left my car door open overnight and the battery went flat. When the AA came and started it for me in the morning he told me my battery was old and needed replacing that day.
The previous year I had taken an old car battery to the metal recylers I knew that they were worth about $5 each, and just a week previous I had noticed a really big old car battery under the house left here by the previous owner.
I went to the dump the next day, and what do you know, there were 2 more car batteries sitting right beside the pit! So I put them in the car and took them home (one leaked a bit of acid and burnt a whole in the concrete in my garage).
I now had 4 batteries – about $20 worth!
With a smug look on my face, I drove to work the next day with the batteries in the back of the car, and took them in during my lunch break.
How much did I get?
$8.
Not $8 each. $8 total!
Despite the increase in lead price over the last few years (driven by an increase in demand for motorbikes and cars in China), the metal recyclers had decided to decrease their payout.
$20 is a decent bit of cash, but $8 was an insult for all the time and effort I had put into this project.
Next time, I will just bury my old car battery in the garden.