Water Heaters - Recently, my stepfather was provided with...

...A water heater. Would it be wrong to saw that it physically looks like a very very very large capacitor (aka cylinder, sorry, I've taken too many electrical courses to look at cylinders as shapes anymore). Well, he was quite paranoid of unloading it from his truck with only my aid considering my lack of strength.

I told him I was up to par with it...

...Then you see me posting the situation here; which evidently meant that I wasn't. My gripped slipped and a corner of it (where the base meets the side considering circles don't have corners =P) hit the cement ground hard, denting it severely. Considering my stepfather's experience with these systems along with a brother who is a professional with these sort of things...His pessimism that the thing is trashed felt concrete.

I'm told that there's at least copper to salvage from this piece of equipment. Cylindrical piles twisting around the interior of the water heater. He told me that the whole thing would have been around $500 undamaged but with the current situation, I think we're just left with copper. Is that true?

Later on, I'll be posting pictures. But if worst comes to worst, what is the best way of selling this? Is it really damaged beyond usage? Should I just post it on craiglist and sell it for $250, with the advertisement appeal of saying that it's broken but the copper is worth [x amount]?

You don't say exactly what king of hw heater you have but there will likely be no copper to save.
If he planned to use it the damage is probably only cosmetic.

If you take some clear pics and post them on a free site like Photo Bucket and provide a link we could take a look.

I'll provide images tomorrow morning, my stepfather is not up to turning the water heater today, and I doubt I'd be able to do much without him.