Guy on YouTube cut a catalytic converter open and melted down the platinum. Turns out after removing all the impurities there is barely an 1/8 of an ounce of platinum in each converter. For all the effort and risk it sure doesn’t seem like a very profitable scheme. You need to steal 8 or 9 catalytic converters to get one once of platinum at about $1,200 an ounce.
The platinum in one converter comes out to about $162 according to my figures. Buy new one & see what it costs. What do they pay for salvage?