A couple of weeks ago I walk out to my car to drive to rehearsal. I'm parked in an alley, along with hundreds of other cars, in tight little parking places on a slant (makes for fun times in winter). I start my car and immediately it sounded like a hot rod. WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MY CAR?! Not only that, but my key has been getting stuck in the ignition and I can't turn off my car. As I've mentioned before, when all hell breaks loose with anything vehicular, I never feel more alone or single.
I made a few phone calls and decided it must be my muffler. I drive to the car fix-it place with my sunglasses on and my hand waving a "Hi, yes I know my car is rather deafening at the moment. Sorry about that." The mechanic says to me, before he's even looked at my car, "I think your converter was stolen." WHAT? First of all, what's a converter? And second of all, why would someone steal it? A few hundred dollars later, I found out why. Because it's worth a few hundred dollars! Someone said they just saw this on Dateline. Thanks Dateline for teaching people how to steal converters. Well, my car is O-L-D. So take that thieves! You got a rotten, old, nasty, rusty converter. Sell that! You probably did me a favor. I have a nice, new, pretty converter.
I also discovered that I needed a whole new cylinder for my ignition. We've been through a lot of years together, my car and I. I'll be sad the day I have to let it go.
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4 comments:
Sadly, you may have invested in the platinum market, without knowing it.
The Platinum in your converter is what the thieves are after most times. It is selling for between $1,300 and $1,400 an ounce right now. Most converters will average around 5 grams of platinum so stealing a few converters a day can be lucrative ... unless that whole getting caught, going to trial, going to jail and making a close new friend in prison occurs to a thief. Then, the money may not be worth what happens later. But, real criminal masterminds are hard to come by these days. ;-)
P2
cool post, I'll be sure to get a 'Club' for my converter
Yes, I have heard about this too! I think I just saw it on a regular network news segment a few months ago. They steal converters for the platinum! I can't believe it happened to you though; you're actually the first of anyone I "know" (in the blogosphere or otherwise) who has actually had this happen to them.
~Lisa
I just got an email from my aunt Katie who lives here in Minneapolis, and she just had her converter stolen too! She has one of those smaller trucks (a Toyota of some sort), and it was parked right in front of her house in a pretty safe neighborhood too!
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