Where to sell cats

Yeah the bottom is pretty much falling out of that nonsense that's all that's happened here I didn't think it would go on as It has so there's always that I don't know anybody paying top dollar for the cats right now not even in my area up here in North Carolina where we have a lot of places that deal in this stuff and like you say is that an all-time low and then talking four and $500 for what was called the good stuff I'm the same boat as you no emissions.

 

Sounds like the boat you are in is lots off emissions.

(I know, you actually meant no emissions laws.)

 

are people still stealing them, or are there more valuable things to be stolen?

 

I haven't heard a lot of that going on in this area of the southeast where I am lately I know that they have made it a lot harder to sell them The person going to the metal recycling facility will be asked for more information than purchasing an AK-47 so there's always that and the money has fallen greatly for $500 people are talking about is about right possibly a little less.

 

I lost a lot of faith in that when I lived in Western Massachusetts in the '80s we had to have a exhaust gas analyzer shoved up our tailpipe every year mandatory and this was in the time when we were doing a lot of engine modifications putting in 3S GTE turbo Toyota motors in Corollas and all kinds of nonsense these engines came from Japan usually were not federal emissions compliant and so on even with those engines dropped in my Corollas when I went to the sniff test it still passed and the numbers at the tailpipe or what was on the VECI sticker under the hood or whatever that's called and I would have no cats or gutted cats and all of those things done to these vehicles pass with flying colors I'm thinking to myself we're doing all this rear-end sniffing and all that but what's the end game Why is my car with all this nonsense passing with flying colors something has to be wrong Massachusetts was not a state to be messing around in with this stuff in those days they seemed pretty serious about it people were being drug into court for removing cats and things like that.

 

still, 400 bucks for a minutes work isn't hard to take. that's 24k an hour, not counting the time between thefts.
i suppose it's a big comedown from the $1,000. plus they were getting, and they might have moved on to smash and grab or the like.

 

And you've got to have some legit paperwork in willing to give it up to make the sales most states have passed laws now that have cranked down on this stuff that's the thing so when your ID shows up at the same place 15 times in a week or a month or whatever it is I guess that red flag stuff for people.

 

well, if it's working, it may be the first time a law has stopped a criminal

 

I sold my CAT 3-4 years ago on EBAY auction for $1250,
purchased a $150 aftermarket CAT on EBAY===$1100 in my pocket

 

Yes, the market has dropped significantly. At one point it was around 30k+ per ounce and a set of Gen 2 cats was going for $1800 scrap price. I sold a few sets at that price. It's not down to 4kish? per ounce. BIG drop. No one is going to buy a set of GD3/EA6 cats for 1000 today, or even half that most likely. If yours are fully functional, you'd get a better price selling them to someone that needs them, in a state that requires them to be OEM.

 

Sorry, left out this part.....Rhodium....moved from 5k/ounce pre-covid to 30k per ounce in early 2021, which is what caused the vast majority of the big spike in catalytic converter scrap value. Rhodium is now down to the mid 4k range. About 1/8th of its peak value and slightly lower than pre-covid. That has made a HUGE impact on the price of catalytic converter scrap value. Shortly before covid, people were offering around $300 for a set of EA6/GD3 cats. I think we're pretty much right back where we were before the world went nuts. $400 is probably a pretty fair price, I would take it. I have 1 Gen 2 OEM exhaust system sitting by the garage from a car that had the P0420 code and my current 2007 has an OEM exhaust. I'd probably jump on the $400 for the one sitting on the ground. The one installed in the 2007 probably isn't worth the effort or risk to swap with an aftermarket, unless I just want to protect myself from theft.

 

California used to do that too, but now they normally just check for codes. Turned out that there was a very good correlation between tail pipe fails and CEL codes.

I'm not sure what they do about diesels though, given the cheating at the manufacturer level. Hopefully the state slaps a sniffer on a couple of each model and drives them around like that for months to pick up any new cheating schemes.

 

It might be worth more selling it as an intact OEM catalytic converter than the metals out of it.