Swiping Catalytic Converters has been going on for years. Mostly in urban areas. Makes sense that this crime would be on the uptick during tough economic times.

Several years ago I watched a guy from my office window doing it to a co-workers car. I didn't know exactly what he was doing at the time but I called the co-worker and let him know that someone was messing with his car. By the time he got out there the thief had already finished the job and high tailed it.

Worst thing I have ever had happen to my car at work was someone stealing the renewal stickers from my license plates.

The other day I watched our local police chief talk about this problem. He said it takes about a minute to remove the convertor, the thief gets around $300, costs the car owner about $1,000. He also said it happens a lot where there are lots of cars....apartments, shopping malls, etc.

It was so bad here in Alberta last year that if auto wreckers or metal recycling plants bought them from known thieves, they would be charged with theft as well. Some wreckers and recycling plants were buying them over and over again from the same people knowing they were thefts. That pretty much put a stop to vehicles having theirs ripped out here.

That sounds like a great way to combat this nonsense, Debby. It happened to one of my coworkers daughter's car in the twin cities. He had warned her, she didn't believe him, and left her car out overnight.

Catalytic converter theft has always been an issue, but it has exploded in the last year. There are several factors. First, the price of salvage precious metals and steel are way up. Secondly, people are out of work whether it be involuntary or those taking advantage of the situation. While penalizing both the thief and the salvage yards that buy the stolen catalytic converters helps, it mostly catches the small-time thieves. There are professional theft rings stealing converters. The actual value of the metals in the converters far exceed the $300 a salvage yard pays for one. Professional theft rings use a variety of techniques to “sell” the converters and maximize their profit. Some disassemble the converters, extract pellets and sell them to a smelter. Others bury the converters in a load of scrap metal and ship/smuggle them out of the country. Some extract the precious metals from the pellets themselves as there a how to’s on YouTube.

Yes, this has been going on for as long as they've been used. If you think of the first day a car so equipped was parked somewhere out in public as Day 1, the first theft can't have happened much later than Day 7.

Sloppy journalism (I don't use or accept the F word). It happens all too often. The assignment editor sends an unqualified person to do a particular story and the reporter writes an article but misses the story. This time, the reporter was not from the auto beat but rather from the climate beat. Someone from the auto beat would have crafted a different piece because they presumably would have had a better grasp of what they were writing about.

Why can I buy a new non carb compliant cat for my CRV for under $200 and a carb compliant one for around $325?

I'm not cool enough to know what CARB stands for, I had to look it up.

California's tougher emission standards have been adopted by many other states. Why would a component that's part of a system that needs to be more capable, to achieve cleaner output be more expensive than a system that doesn't meet the tougher standard? I think the technical reason is obvious and like everything else, there's probably a supply and demand component to the price, whether upward or downward.

I'm wondering why I can buy a new cat for less than what a salvage yard will pay for a used one.

Is there some super special type of cat that is supposedly worth a salvage yard paying $300 for a used one.

A premium Federal/ EPA carb compliant MagnaFlow cat is under $400 from Amazon. What am I missing here?

For any manufactured product, the sum of retail prices for component pieces purchased separately is always, and has always, been greater than the cost of the completed product with all the parts included.

If you buy the parts separately and pay someone to put them together, it might cost twice as much. Or more. If you restore a car with original parts, you might spend 10X or more what the car cost new .If you buy a house and remodel it a certain way, it may be unlikely you could recover on sale what you spent. Too many examples to cite, you should be able to figure out why.

Also Amazon of course is supposed to be cheaper than a conventional brick and mortar retailer.

Why don't the thieves just buy a bunch of cats off Amazon for $54.99 free shipping plus tax and sell it to the salvage yard for $300? And save going out in the cold, crawling under a car, getting dirty & risking arrest?

AUTOSAVER88 ATCC0017 2.25" Inlet/Outlet Universal Catalytic Converter with O2 Port and Heat Shield (EPA Compliant)

Amazon review: Replacement for stolen converter off of 2000 s10 .Seems to be working great but is brand new without many miles on it!

ci_lantro....I used to ask questions like that. ☺ Thieves are lazy. It's hard to order things. You have to have cash to place the order or a credit card.....

The car lot across from my husbands shop, in an industrial area....had the converters cut off & stolen off ALL the parked cars.

I remember when "spinner" wheels were a hot to-steal item.

"Also Amazon of course is supposed to be cheaper than a conventional brick and mortar retailer."

It is? Source?

The catalytic converter is a component of the the exhaust system. Only additional part of a cat is the O2 sensor. I doubt that thieves are stealing the entire exhaust system from the manifold to the tail pipe.

If I wanted to steal catalytic converters, which ones are worth $300 salvage price? Do I need to worry about someone stealing the cat off of my CRV?

The car lot across from my husbands shop, in an industrial area....had the converters cut off & stolen off ALL the parked cars.

ALL? Where? So I don't go there!

Oh my, this has been going on the rounds for decades. A few years back it was folks ripping copper out of stuff, sometimes it's aluminum or brass stuff. Depends on what metal is "hot" at the time.

Now we are back to converters for palladium and platinum again. There's other metals too, but that's the big tickets. Palladium, most smaller cats have 2-6 grams of it, and most large cats range from 6-30 grams. Prices can change, but palladium is currently at 76 bucks a gram. The other expensive one more common in less luxury vehicles is platinum- and smaller cats average 3-7 grams. Platinum is around 37 bucks per gram right now. Rhodium is a more pricey metal too, but not all cats have it.

So- not all cats are priced alike usually. Depends on the area and the scrapyards rates, if the cats are big, small, domestic, import, how the cat is built, the age/wear on the cat, ect. Prices can range from just a few bucks to a few hundred bucks.

A small domestic no name cat can scrap for 50-80 bucks, where a small foreign cat might be worth almost double- exotic cats cash in for more. Named brands usually cash in for more than Universals. Pre-cats and aftermarket cats can fetch a few bucks too.

Someone snatching 300 dollar cats on the regular and turning them in knows their cats and also has the hookups with scrappers.

Swiping Catalytic Converters has been going on for years. Mostly in urban areas. Makes sense that this crime would be on the uptick during tough economic times.

Apparently the precious metals in their manufacture are making them more profitable now than they used to be.

Here, from the NYT:

From about $500 an ounce five years ago, the price of palladium quintupled to hit a record of $2,875 an ounce last year, and is now hovering between $2,000 and $2,500 an ounce, above the price of gold. Rhodium prices have skyrocketed more than 3,000 percent from about $640 an ounce five years ago to a record $21,900 an ounce this year, roughly 12 times the price of gold.

The soaring prices may be accelerating the shift to electric cars, analysts said, noting that catalytic converters now make up a much larger proportion of a gasoline-powered vehicle’s cost than they did even just a year ago.

The metals prices, in turn, are fueling a black market in stolen catalytic converters, which can be sawed off from the belly of a car in minutes, and fetch several hundred dollars at a scrapyard, which then sells it to recyclers who extract the metals.

So, I went digging:

Certain cars are reportedly being targeted more than others. The Toyota Prius is especially attractive to thieves, as they know their catalytic converters don’t need to work as hard to tamp down emissions. That means there’s a potential for more of the precious metals to still be intact within the converter should the car have a lot of miles on it. Of course, the same can be said for any hybrid or plug-in hybrid vehicle these days.

That was helpful information, Beesneeds. Thank you.

Gee, with my brother it was the spare tire. He had a Ford Explorer with the spare mounted on the underside of the car, and he has a condo with on-street parking. After the second time the spare was stolen, he kept the spare IN the car.

Notice how few cars have hood ornaments now? Yep, stealing them was a thing.

ci_lantro.

To answer your question re: why thieves don't just buy off after market off Amazon: There is a significant difference in quality . OEM catalytic converters generally contain more precious metals and last significantly longer than after market. While the vehicle may run well for a time, in a short period of time it may not pass the particulate emmissions portion of a state vehicle inspection.

In my area Prius are regularly targeted for their catalytic converters.

Who doesn't park in their garage? Your vehicle is typically the second most expensive items you own so why would your protect junk in the garage and leave a vehicle out. Many HOA's now require cars to be garaged. I know my insurance charges lower premiums for garaged vehicles.

Lol bpath, hood ornaments not only stolen... but then proudly displayed/worn on necklaces or like badges on jackets and hats. And at one time, fancy valve caps were popular- and stolen as quickly as gotten. And when big spoilers on little foreign cars, giant sound systems in trunks, under-lights, fancy license plate frames- yep, swiped. Ohhh, and cars jacked and tires stolen- prompting fancy locking lug nuts.

Who doesn't park in their garage?

I know, it's crazy, right? But many people in my area use their garage for storage, and not only leave their vehicle either in the driveway or on the street, but then leave it unlocked also.

And then there is a theft and do they garage their vehicle after? Nope. They install an expensive camera setup, leave their garage full of stuff, and still leave their vehicle out.

I had mine stolen a few years back when I parked overnight at my ex-husband's place when we were still dating. This was in a ritzy area of Irvine, CA so I wasn't expecting that to happen! I still remember the horrible noise it made when I tried to start my car!

Around here the parents' cars get the garage. Kid cars get the driveway. And last year with ALL the kids home from college and everyone working from home, well, the house next door had 6 cars in the driveway. Plus the trailer. With that many kids, home from college with all THAT gear, there was a lot of stuff in the garage.

Raye Smith, I'm not sure where you live, but parking in the garage is not an option in lots of places, that's if you even have a garage. Our 1967-era home has a one-car garage that I might be able to get a MiniCooper into, but nothing larger.

With oversize SUVs and pickups still being frequent there must be a lot of people who cannot park in a standard sized garage stall. Today I looked out to see a neighbor stopped at the community mail tree and his truck was so big I couldn't believe it. When he climbed back into it he looked like he was boarding a docked boat.

True, but many of the vehicles I see left out are smaller. I suppose this is a somewhat time limited issue though, with the advent of electric vehicles.

I can think of one house in my neighborhood that has more than a one car slot and he has a garage separate from the house. In older neighborhoods like this one where houses were built from the 1940s through 1980s most of the houses have actually turned their garage into a more useful room.

Also, many people live in cities and park on the street. I do.

I wonder if there is any reasonable protection for street parkers. The NYT article had a business person who said that if he had vehicles he thought might be a target, he let the air out of the tires so no one could get under the vehicle, but that is not an everyday convenient solution.

Everyone has different practices and priorities. Adequate and usable garage parking space has always been a non-negotiable priority for us when house hunting, probably dating back to when I was more fastidious about keeping my cars as clean as possible. I still feel the same way but I'm a bit less fastidious.

I'd consider a house with no or inadequate closed parking spaces ONLY if a contractor could tell me there was enough room and it would be reasonably feasible to build a suitable garage. So not for protection from damage but more protection from the elements. Where we live cars parked outside are rarely disturbed.

My insurance company does not offer lower premium rates for cars that are parked in a closed garage.

It happened to me a couple months ago, in a parking lot while I was inside grocery shopping. Called AAA tow truck because I had no idea why my car suddenly sounded like the whole muffler system was gone - half of it was. lol The tow guy looked under it, said there was "a hole in the carburetor" but it was safe to drive home. The shop told me about the cat. theft (and why), I'd never heard of this going on before, now I'm worried about parking it anywhere for fear it'll get nabbed again.

I've never heard of this before. Just people braeking into cars and stealing money and other things people leave in their cars. I wonder if they do this in the UK too. My son is having his Prius shipped there and he lives in a fairly high crime ridden area. The big thing here is people stealing copper wiring from construction sites and mostly businesses late at night.

"Who doesn't park in their garage?"

Shame on all those people who live in apartments. Or people who drive to the grocery store. Or anyplace else. It doesn't take long to steal one. It doesn't only happen at one's home.

The catalyst in a converter is platinum. That's worth stealing, but you do need a buyer to get money for one. Most of the time, a converter fails because the platinum coating gets covered and becomes ineffective, but it is still there. Once the platinum is deactivated, the converter tends to plug up.

Lead in the older style gasolines will plate over platinum. That failure was called 'poisoning'.

Local TV news just had a story on this, said it is "surging" locally. With 2019 reported incidences few and current ones in the hundreds from one location to the next. And manufacturing in China apparently being the driver - law enforcement is looking at scrap yards because the thieves can't get anything out of stealing the converters without being able to find willing commercial buyers.

One of the victims they showed clips of was a new car dealer that had had somebody come on the lot and help themselves. In another instance a surveillance video provided by a private party showed it takes about 10 seconds to cut a converter out of a car and leave with it. Not unexpectedly the perpetrator could be seen to be a young male goofball with backwards baseball hat, oversize coat and shorts with stick legs poking out. And was probably stealing to pay for drugs.

1940’s house with a small, one car garage here.

3 vehicles in the household.

We park in the driveway and have a motion detector, lights, camera. If we get hit, it will likely be someone in a black winter coat and a mask on. Fat lot of good the camera will do.