Brass can be a pain in the butt....
When I first started as a firearms instructor for our academy we mostly used commercial reloaded ammunition, and most officers shot .38 specials. All shooters on our range policed their brass and we turned it in for credit towards our next ammunition order. In the early '90's it was mandated that all training was done with commercial ammunition, no reloads. This was also about the same time that everyone was switching to semi automatics. I was range master by this time and brass was my responsibility. Initially I got five cents per round and the local gun shops would pick up the policed brass to sell in their shops. Then it was down to one cent per round, then they were over loaded and didn't want it any more.
For awhile I sold it to a well known commercial reloader but it had to be sorted and then shipped. They paid me for the brass in credit towards their ammunition, which worked well as most of our ammunition for our sniper rifles came from them. I would have a couple of my range officers pick up 1/2 dozen prisoner trustees for a day when it was closed for maintenance. They would police all of the brass and sort it... then back home to jail for the night.
That deal eventually fell through and I was stuck with literally truck loads of once fired brass. We serviced 39 agencies and some of my bigger classes had 70 students and they would shoot 1,500 rounds each per week. It was nothing to have 40-50 five gallon buckets of assorted brass in my storage building. It was literally a huge pain in the butt. I shot a lot of I.P.S.C. and I.D.P.A. during those years and when friends were crying about brass, I would bring them a whole bucket of once fired .45, 9mm or .40 brass. At the time we shot Federal GM .308 out of all of our sniper rifles and I bought it in bulk. That was the only brass most guys were even interested in. Most of the other stuff I couldn't even give away.
I eventually had to start selling it for scrap, just to get rid of it. I actually got between .45 and .80 cents a pound for brass. I would have one of my range officers take a truck load of buckets of brass to the scrap yard... usually 600-750 pounds, four times each year. The stupid part was that the way my accounts were set up through the City, I couldn't put that money back into my ammunition budget, I had to put it in my range maintenance budget??? As a result, we did have a envious facility... buildings painted and kept up, trees, shrubs, more steel plate trees and pepper poppers than we could use.
I retired last year and prior to doing so I arranged a deal with a scrap yard from out of state that services a lot of police ranges. They brought in one-way drums and left them on sight. The officers policed their brass and poured it into the funnel shaped tops, with the only provision being that they wanted no aluminum cases. Every month or two they sent a flat bed truck with a Tommy lift on it up to pick up the barrels and leave empty ones, and then just sent me a check.
As a result, I have more brass than I or my sons will ever use here at the house.... .45, .40, .9mm,. 357 Sig, .223, .308. But we do go through a lot of it and enjoy the loading aspect.