Hey all! So I live in Idaho now, and hybrid cars are smog exempt here. That being the case I pulled my Toyota original catalytic converter and shelved it for a rainy day. So this has me wondering what the market is for them these days? Anyone interested?
There was a time you'd get $1600 cash real quick for them... But most of that went away when they busted up all the crime rings focused on them. Also, most states created laws requiring chain of custody documentation on selling them to rare metal extractors. As in that Cat you have has 2 grams of Rhodium, 2 grams of Platinum and 2 grams of Palladium. Do a search on current value of those metals and you'll realize the potential value. But process of extracting those metals is sketchy... On a more practical level, if at some point you just want to get rid of it and ensure its gifted to a low income person in need, I know someone that would be grateful to pay a modest price because a Seattle Toyota Stealership installed an aftermarket cat during the theft epicdemic in early 2000's and charged her thousands and it already failed a year after the 3-year warranty expired and she worries alot about the catalytic converter error code and it'd be nice to eliminate those text messages and the drive over to clear the code routine of it all from my life.
This forum has a 'for sale' section that you might try. You live on free soil but you're close enough to some who are not to make a sale worth while. The G2's are like WW2 vets. Heroes all - but not many of them are left and so the demand for an actual working OEM cat is falling off rapidly - and remember....YOURS is used. You may have yanked it out of your car right after you drove it off the lot. or it may have 250,000 miles on it. Or? It might be stolen. WHO is to say? I'd try the for-sale section of this forum first. Good Luck!
2g each may be optimistic, but they're not worth anywhere even close to the values they had during the pandemic when Rhodium went to ~30k or so/ounce. Current prices: 31 grams per troy ounce Rhodium: ~6900/ounce=about 222/gram Platinum: ~1650/ounce=about 53/gram Palladium: ~1350/ounce=about 44/gram So best case if 2g per metal, precious metal value is now $638 after processing. At the peak during pandemic, a set of Gen 2 cats were going for $1800+ on ebay, for scrap value. Currently, a good original Toyota Gen 2 OEM exhaust pipe, is likely worth much more to an owner living in a CA emission state who has a P0420 code than to any scrap dealer.
