Why scrapping treaty capital ships could cost money

Why was it so expensive to scrap interwar battlecruisers that had never entered service?

Treaty deadlines flooded the scrap market with ships and prevented navies from waiting for better metal prices.

The answer links high disposal costs to the number of capital ships sent for breaking at the same time. A sudden supply of armour plate and structural steel depressed the value that breakers could recover from each hull. Under ordinary conditions, a navy might wait several years for the market to improve. Treaty deadlines prevented that delay and forced disposal into an already saturated market. Scrapping was therefore not an automatic financial windfall; strategic agreements could impose a real budgetary cost even after construction spending had ended.