I guess he didn't know how rare these are. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxqE0QvImw0&t=215s

 Honestly , a scrapper couldn't care less how rare something is . All they care about is how much money they can make in as short of a time with as little work as possible ! Sure , he could've listed it on eBay for who knows how long , stored it during that time , then had to pack it up carefully & drive it to the shipper's . Plus , suppose it got damaged/lost in shipping ?  Then he's got to refund the buyer AND he's out the value of the scrap metal !  In the end , he only made $15-20 in scrap , but it only took him maybe an hour or 2 to separate it into different metal types .  The big wall of ingots he showed at the end is probably worth close to a grand in scrap !

 I used to scrap as a side hustle a few years back . If you properly separate everything , you can make some good money really quickly with not much effort !!

those lights are WORTH money to a VERY select few people and the Alu ingots are an easy sale
add in the light was in a dumpster so likely would have gotten destroyed one way or another
it is a shame the light engine was NOT saved at least

 My point exactly !

Well, it seems that the late LG's remake of sulfur lamp ended up in Australia - https://sound-au.com/lamps/sp-lamp.html

Unluckily for the scrapper, someone already took heavy copper rich magnetron transformers from the base, leaving him with just cheapo casting aluminium and useless light engine parts. )

Overall the construction looks rather lame with this plastic DC fan used for outdoor installation, already full with dust.