I recently rescued a chair the trash. It has @ 75 brass tacks along the edges. I have seen similar beat up chairs with brass tacks in the past but allways left them. Would you put the time into pulling out the tacks for scrap brass ?
If you are sitting around with nothing to do and bored, why not? Gives you something to do and more for the brass bucket. Bottom line is if they come out easy enough, I would.