Yeah, that contraption down there that’s underneath your car is now a pretty big deal to criminals. Why? Who would want to waste their time cutting this thing off the bottom of your vehicle while you’re at home sleeping or shopping at the store? Well, criminals, obviously. But these criminals are very well versed in the cost of precious metals and the ones that happen to be in the above device are worth more than what gold is going for in a lot of instances. Depending on how new or old your car or truck is, there may be just under $7,000 of certain materials in that thing making it very much worth stealing. Lets have a look.

Above are the current spot prices for just two of the materials found therein, platinum and palladium. Within these catalytic converters one may find anywhere from 3-7 grams of the above precious metals. 1 gram of platinum is currently going for about $68 as of this writing. If you cut off a few of these a day, know some guys at a recycling center who are willing to turn a blind eye to how many converters you’re giving them per day, this can end up being semi lucrative. But that’s just platinum.

If we take a quick look at palladium, we can surmise that about $107 would be the sum we get for 1 gram of the rare substance. Still not super crazy on the recycling side of things but again, it comes down to how many of these are being pulled out of these converters daily by adept criminals and we must also consider that this is 100% profit. The only overhead here is owning the tools necessary to remove the material and the vehicle you’re using to get away in.

Ok, ok, ok but Dom you said that in some instances the materials found in these things is just under $7,000 right? Yes, I did. That is another precious metal in the same family of the ones already mentioned but even more rare and more valuable. It’s called Rhodium, see below:

Yes, so the above rhodium bar is currently going for over $26,000!!! So if we do some quick math we can extract $944 per gram of rhodium found in a converter or “cat” for short. That’s more than some people pay in rent every month! Let’s also keep in mind that the minimum our cats usually have in them is again, 3 grams. So depending on the type of vehicle the absolute minimum these people are stealing from you is about $2,800 per stolen converter. That’s the minimum, of course they’re probably getting less as the guy they’re giving it to that actually harnesses the metal has to make a profit too. We should assume that they know exactly which vehicles are carrying rhodium converters along with which ones might be holding the full 7 grams. From what I’ve read it would seem that hybrids are a pretty big target because their cats don’t have to work as hard seeing they’re partly electrical. This preserves the metals in the cat far better making them worth far more dollars.

As of right now I’m not sure how wide spread this is or what the numbers for 2021 look like on actual thefts, I just know it’s being talked about. What I do know is as the economy gets worse, as unemployment benefits dry up, as desperation becomes more pronounced, we can always expect crime to go up. That’s never not been the case. I think the worst is still to come and we’ve only skimmed the surface thus far. I do believe some semblance of a fiat collapse is still very possible as well as hyper inflation (already slowly happening). Mix those two together and we’re going to be in for a very bumpy ride on the economic side as well as the civil unrest side of things. It’s interesting how politics stop mattering as soon as food stops showing up on shelves or when a loaf of bread ends up costing a month’s salary.

Stay safe out there friends.