"work hardened copper" so work hardened it turned into iron & had carbon as its decay & fissile that came out. That is genuinely brutal. Maybe turning it into a cool box or new shelf... I dunno something, right? Because you over paid for the steel, I mean copper is supposed to be more expensive than steel too so that's just annoying. But what is it, like a 1/4 lbs of copper in plating?
Spite them! Muahahahaha! Make a tiny cooler anyways! Build from the annoying a "lemonade stand" from the lemons life gave you, to try & portal it up a bit.
Side note, glados was turned into glados against her will. She offed the real one inside of her because she was in every single way never having wanted any of it to happen to her, she did the one nicest thing she could have ever done to herself. Removed the pain she was going through & accepted she's not her & never will be & never was.
Glados isn't terrible, she went through hell dealing with a utterly garbage company that treated her terribly & to rtu red her regularly. It took me quite a long time to figure that out. I had to think about her perspective for quite a bit to finally get there, she shoves the main character out as one of the one's who participated in her creation & helped others to view that company & its actions as good. Chel isn't great as a person, she isn't (possibly) all that bad, but like dude come on.
Seeing it from her perspective it makes her look monstrous. Thinking about the guy trapped too, trying to hurt her... I dunno man, they all seem odd trying to go after a person inside of a computer they basically put in there against their will & then had them become utterly beaten & broken. The madness of trying to suggest their actions look good is certainly that, madness.
Born of ego, crazed frenzy trying to act as if they were the better to soothe their own understanding of what they did & all the damage they'd done to her & others in the name of science. Its too similar to ww2 stuff dude.
Anyways, back to this; I'm just suggesting some positive thinking. If only because what else can you do, the boxes are interesting, the metal has a story, & the whole thing can be done up to be a middle finger to the scammers who did you dirty.
Careful though, people talk & will want to know you will genuinely look harder into things. Once a target looks like a target they keep looking to do it to you. Even flying over there yourself & using your trusted contacts won't get you all the way there at times. I commented on another commenters comment (3 times fast on that one, geez!) where they had an investigator the entire way & it got them at the end. Good stuff.
Truthfully, what kind of sucks about this is the fact that unless you own a mine & or a recycling company you can't really source it without some amount of risk. Making it yourself is the only real way to completely remove the issue. But, that can be a ray of gamma or a ray of wonderful sunshine through the dystopian-scape of near ww3 we have going on.
Having control & gaining community efforts in a local way, becoming more involved in the local industrial processes, etc all can help with sourcing a recycling effort that could help offset a good amount of the costs for you. You have good contacts, people do like you & would be willing to get rid of old computers & more, even word of mouth it around to help it grow until it could really reduce the costs.
The issue is that it is a long-term investment strat & comes with upfront costs & some knowledge of chemistry to help increase efficiency of the whole process. Heating isn't always going to give you the best options, Germany is good to make sure you can't just rain down terribly toxic chemical wastes from the air on to your neighbors & say it's their fault.
Like we tend to do here in America. Hate that.
But that means its more difficult to separate things, without that knowledge. You are smart enough to find people who have it & can help you. Also you now have a big supply of steel that could make that happen more easily. At small scale at least to start off with *shrugs*
