Scrap metal yards and dealers have many items which have been collected from individuals in various states of disrepair. These range from iron boxes to rusted skillets. Its a nice way to save money to go there and enquire whether they have such items in stock. They sell them at a fraction of the original price and most only require little refurbishment.
Hmm.. I haven't been in one before but that's a pretty good idea actually. I guess, if I do my own smithing work I would go there to buy some scrap metals. Back in the past, I pickup any metal objects I come across whenever I go to school or home and then keep all of those metal in boxes. What I normally do with the metals is sell them for extra cash and sometimes I make an art out of them.
Over here, there are people that really scavenge the trash to look for metals, plastics, cartons, etc. that they can sell in a junk shop. Sometimes, they buy those materials from other people too at a very low price, then they sell it at junk shops. I remember my dad selling our broken CPU for only $1 to those people that look for "sellable" thrash to sell to the junk shop. I was unaware that he did that. Eventhough the PC won't boot, my files were still in there, so too bad I never was able to recover my files in there. And $1 for a CPU with a corrupted system as a problem? That's pretty cheap, since it's still fixable!
Every once in a while we have repairs done on our house. About 3 years ago when we had our fence reconstructed (because it was already dangerously leaning on one side) our neighbor advised me to buy scrap metal instead of new iron bars which are very expensive. I agree that the cost was around 10% to 20% for the used iron bars but I did not have the volition to buy because of the rust. Although our neighbor said that rusty bars will stop rusting when enclosed in concrete, my wife preferred to just spend more for the new bars to at least be assured of the strength and durability.
I know of several metal scraps dealer in my area and I was able to save substantial cash by buying stuff for my home and business. They don't just sell metal scraps but also a range of used items such as marine plywood, steel cabinets, pedestal cabinet, mirrors, steel pot holders, and metal dividers. We simply use cheap rust removers to clean the metal items, paint them over, and they're good as new. If I have a wider front yard area, I would have made a side business out of it. I once sold three steel pot holders to a neighbor at 300% profit after painting what used to be rusty metal items.