Just because something has a cost doesn't mean it's irreplacable or rare.
There's other things that cost alot on a vehicle, wheels and tires on an SUV cost more or about equal to the catalytic converter, so by design wheels and tires are from a supply and demand perspective more precious and rare than catalytic converters.
What thieves choose to steal has nothing to do with scarcity and everything to do with convenience. While these small amounts of precious metals may sound important rare earth metals are literally everywhere.
Were just too rich to care about mining them in the first world.
It's not just convenience but if you swipe a set of four wheels it's much more obvious that they're missing just by looking at the car and now you need to go find a pawn shop that's going to take these four wheels and tires. Law enforcement has done a pretty good job of working with pawn shops to avoid this kind of stuff although it still does exist.
The catalytic converter is very quick to steal as long as the thieves have a brain and know what one looks like but most importantly if the car is just sitting in a driveway you can't tell anything has been done to it. Also metal recyclers traditionally haven't been looped in with law enforcement for this kind of thing and recyclers tend to be a lot more shady because there's less oversight. Once something's been recycled you can't really tell what it was before.
Most other parts on a car the melt value is almost nothing in relation to the effort it takes to get it. Catalytic converter the melt value is very very high in proportion.
[+] [-] concerned_|2 years ago|reply
There's other things that cost alot on a vehicle, wheels and tires on an SUV cost more or about equal to the catalytic converter, so by design wheels and tires are from a supply and demand perspective more precious and rare than catalytic converters.
What thieves choose to steal has nothing to do with scarcity and everything to do with convenience. While these small amounts of precious metals may sound important rare earth metals are literally everywhere.
Were just too rich to care about mining them in the first world.
[+] [-] elmerfud|2 years ago|reply
The catalytic converter is very quick to steal as long as the thieves have a brain and know what one looks like but most importantly if the car is just sitting in a driveway you can't tell anything has been done to it. Also metal recyclers traditionally haven't been looped in with law enforcement for this kind of thing and recyclers tend to be a lot more shady because there's less oversight. Once something's been recycled you can't really tell what it was before.
Most other parts on a car the melt value is almost nothing in relation to the effort it takes to get it. Catalytic converter the melt value is very very high in proportion.