Price of Palladium at all time high... Cat converter

Pervious $400 per ounce...today $3,400 per ounce

https://www.thedrive.com/news/44648/palladium-prices-spike-as-russian-exports-drop-so-keep-an-eye-on-your-catalytic-converter

I figure it's only a matter of time before I come out of the gas station to a much louder Prius

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

If you're visiting rough areas, Google up Prius Cat Shield. 

I have not but I'm thinking about it. 

I have a cat to sell from the old tiburon.... Who wants it?

I may start cutting cats out of my own vehicles!

You should see the prices of old Palladium concert fliers!!!

Between that and some folks trying to pass a bill to make selling these things almost impossible, I should get the one I have in the shop off to the recycler ASAP.

I have to figure out what this means in cat prices.  I still own 3 Prius but I have no emissions testing. 

I wonder if I can pull out my old but factory cats, replace with aftermarket, and still turn a hefty profit

In reply to John Welsh :

The thieves are after the upstream cat. That's where the good stuff is. If you pull that, your ECM will be quite unhappy. I'm sure the internet has an answer somewhere, but nothing I can recommend because "federal crime"

wae said:

Between that and some folks trying to pass a bill to make selling these things almost impossible, I should get the one I have in the shop off to the recycler ASAP.

same here.  I have two off of my landy when I replaced the whole system.  

In reply to John Welsh :

Was there a website you had posted once where you can put in your make and model and it will give you a cash offer for the converter? 
 

I thought someone on here had posted that up. 

This site has come up on GRM before.  I have never used...  

https://rrcats.com/

But look at this when I do ebay advanced search for Prius Catalytic specifying items previously sold and used.  

$1,500 sold 5 days ago. 
$1,200 sold 6 days ago.
$1,500 sold 7 days ago

John Welsh said:

This site has come up on GRM before.  I have never used...  

https://rrcats.com/

I just submitted photos of the one from my old Kia Sedona. I'll update when I hear back. 

The quote was $193 for the cat from a 2010 Sedona.
 

They are offering free shipping, so it seems like the easy button. Although I'm not sure if that's a good price. 

Looks like this seller got $349 for one Kia Sedona cat, plus $91 shipping, or total of $440. You'd have to pay eBay fees (12.9% now with credit card fees!) so would net about $383 minus shipping costs. I can guarantee shipping wouldn't be $91 within the US. Ship using pirateship.com UPS option.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/234446303056

In reply to No Time :

I tried a similar ebay search for Sedona and came up with a 2003 that seems to have sold for $349 and $90 shipping

EDIT: working on the same as above at the same time...he beat me to it.

There is also this place. I read a lot of the owners things online because I am peripherally involved in metal recycling for work.

Converter Reclaim

My fear of ebay (and the fear of all these places) is that I send in my "genuine" to then have them claim I sent "aftermarket".  If this kind of claim is made with ebay, what protects me?  

In reply to John Welsh :

Nothing really.  eBay is very favorable to buyers.  I've sold a bunch of stuff lately on eBay (mostly 80s toys and car parts I had lying around) and only once was it a real problem.  Document things well and be honest in your description.  The worst that will happen is they have to ship it back to you and you lose out on the shipping cost both ways. 

Rrcats website doesn't reflect the currency higher prices on their chart. 
 

actually a bit lower than last summer. 

In reply to Somebeach (Forum Supporter) :

That's good to know, I didn't think to check that. I may wait a few weeks (I traded in the van in May) to allow the recycler  pricing to catch up. 

Since I drive a Honda Element which is a super high cat theft risk I went ahead and ordered an elaborate cat shield a few days ago. I've been pushing my luck for a while and it's made me paranoid when I park it somewhere. My Element is  keeper so I consider it an investment.

My daughter drives a CRV and parks it in dorm parking lot at her big city college. It's just a matter of time on that one. But teenage daughter who doesn't really seem to take care of her stuff very much I'm not compelled to put 350 dollars worth of cat shield on her car since I have no idea when or how that car will meet its demise. 

Sold a chevy express cat for $182 plus shipping and another that had 1/3 of the core eroded for $112 on ebay a couple weeks ago.  Unfortunately I'm out of cats to sell.  Have to be careful because they tend to cancel listings that have any descriptors beyond part number, weight, and dimensions.  They cancelled me twice on each for first saying from a mid 00's gm van and then for using general motors in the listing.  I feel like at this point the people who are buying them know what they're looking at.

my scrap guy took 200 of them he was saving up to a big cat recycler a couple hours away and got $14,000.  I bet if he sold them one at a time on ebay he would have got at least 30k after fees and shipping.  

Patrick said:

my scrap guy took 200 of them he was saving up to a big cat recycler a couple hours away and got $14,000.  I bet if he sold them one at a time on ebay he would have got at least 30k after fees and shipping.  

Time and suffering is money here.  The cat recycler probably holds them until speculation gives them a favorable price on the precious metals, then unloads thousands of converters.  Smaller operations would probably have a hard time sitting on that resource.

I look forward to the sale of these being illegal. I'm tired of processing theft claims for them.