Brass plumbing fittings: where sellers find brass.

Valves, elbows, unions, and the rest

Valves — gate, ball, globe, and hose bibs — are the heavy hitters: solid brass bodies, the single most common brass item in the trade. Elbows, tees, and couplings connect the runs. Unions are the chunky three-piece connectors. Nipples are the short threaded lengths. Faucet bodies, flush valves, and shower valves round out the fixture side.

Older commercial work adds steam traps, radiator valves, and backflow preventers — bigger, heavier, and usually red brass rather than yellow. Size and weight are your friends here: a two-pound valve body is real money, a bag of tiny fittings is still worth sorting.

Remodels, tear-outs, and plumber's trucks

Bathroom and kitchen remodels, commercial tenant tear-outs, boiler and repiping jobs, and plant shutdowns. Plumbers themselves are a source — the cut-out bin on a plumber's truck fills up fast, and most of it is brass.

Estate cleanouts and maintenance closets turn up boxes of new-old-stock fittings: still in the bag, still stamped, easiest brass you'll ever sort. Keep new fittings with new fittings — clean and identifiable beats dug-up and crusty.

What counts as clean brass

Clean brass: solid brass bodies and fittings, steel handles removed, plastic and rubber seats dug out, iron pipe nipples taken off, and not mixed with red brass or bronze. Light solder on old joints is expected and stays.

Not clean: valves with the steel handle still on, fittings with iron pipe frozen in the threads, chrome-plated brass (the plating has to be noted), and anything with the rubber washer melted into it. Ten minutes with a wrench and a screwdriver per valve is the whole job — pull the attachments and the fitting grades like it should.

Three things that fool sellers

Chrome-plated brass looks silver but it's brass underneath — still brass, just note the plating. Water meter bodies are often bronze, not brass — separate pile. Die-cast zinc (pot metal) looks brassy from across the room but it's light, dull, and worth a fraction — the file scratch test from the ID guide catches it every time.

Keep reading the brass & bronze dictionary.

Brass & Bronze Dictionary — the full hub of alloy-by-alloy guides. Yellow Brass — the gold-yellow workhorse. Red Brass — the copper-heavy cousin. How Brass & Bronze Get Graded — the four value levers.

Brass fitting questions, answered.