Selling a catalytic converter in Colorado

Who may sell a detached converter

Colorado puts no licensing or trade test on the seller. Anyone may sell a detached converter, but every seller has to prove identity and swear to ownership. Identity is verified by one of six documents: a valid Colorado driver license, a valid identification card issued under § 42-2-302, a valid driver license from another state carrying a picture, a valid military identification card, a valid United States passport, or a valid alien registration card (§ 18-13-111(1)(b)). The buyer records both the seller's identification and the method by which the seller verified it (§ 18-13-111(1)(b)).

The ownership test is a sworn document. The buyer has to require the seller to provide, for the book or register, a signed affidavit, sworn and affirmed under penalty of law, that the seller owns the converter or is otherwise entitled to sell it, and the buyer supplies the affidavit form (§ 18-13-111(1)(c)(I)). The seller also gives the license plate number and a description of the vehicle or conveyance, if any, in which the converter arrived (§ 18-13-111(1)(c)(II)). A detached catalytic converter is defined as a post-combustion device that oxidizes hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide gases or reduces oxides of nitrogen, is designed or intended for use as part of an emission control system, and was previously installed on a motor vehicle and then removed (§ 18-13-111(8)(f)).

Several transactions sit outside the register and photograph rules: materials bought from a regulated public utility or an original manufacturer of scrap or industrially generated scrap, recyclable food and beverage containers from any source apart from reusable metal beer kegs, and any scrap in a transaction between dealers or governmental entities (§ 18-13-111(3)). The section also does not reach a converter acquired as part of a whole motor vehicle transaction where an auto parts recycler reports the acquisition into the national motor vehicle title information system (§ 18-13-111(11)), and it does not apply to anyone who pays nothing for metals collected in drop-off curbside containers or at materials recovery sites (§ 18-13-111(7)).

What the buyer must record

Every owner, keeper, or proprietor of a junk shop, junk store, salvage yard, junk cart, or other vehicle, and every collector of or dealer in junk, salvage, or other secondhand property, keeps a book or register detailing all transactions involving commodity metals or detached converters (§ 18-13-111(1)(a)). The book or register may be written or electronic, including sequentially numbered receipts carrying the required information (§ 18-13-111(8)(b)). Into it go the date and place of each purchase and the description and quantity of the converter purchased (§ 18-13-111(1)(d)), alongside the identification, the verification method, the sworn ownership affidavit, and the vehicle plate and description already described (§ 18-13-111(1)(b), (1)(c)).

A picture of the transaction is required as well. The buyer makes a digital photographic record, a video record, or another record that identifies both the seller and the converter being sold, keeps that record for one hundred eighty days, and permits a law enforcement officer to inspect it (§ 18-13-111(2)). The book or register itself is made available to any peace officer for inspection at any reasonable time (§ 18-13-111(1)(e)), and the information entered in it need not be kept longer than three years after the date of purchase (§ 18-13-111(4)).

Colorado layers a theft-alert duty on top. A purchaser of commodity metals or detached converters has to sign up with the scrap theft alert system maintained by the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries or its successor to receive alerts for the purchaser's geographic area, download and keep the alerts generated by that system, and use them to identify potentially stolen material, including training employees to use them in daily operations (§ 18-13-111(1.3)(a)). Copies of the alerts received and downloaded are kept for ninety days, along with documentation that employees are educated about and given the alerts (§ 18-13-111(1.3)(b)). The Colorado State Patrol distributes an assessment report every July 1 for applicable facilities, covering facility details, the type of book or register, the forms of seller identity verification, use of and employee training on the scrap theft alert system, payment forms to the seller, and the form of records kept, and every applicable facility completes and submits it by August 1 each year (§ 18-13-111(12)(b), (c)). The State Patrol also develops a standard inspection form and training for state, county, and local authorities, and an inspecting agency sends the completed form back to the State Patrol within two weeks (§ 18-13-111(13)(a) to (c)).

How you are paid

Colorado allows cash up to a threshold. A buyer may pay a seller in cash for any commodity metal or detached converter transaction of three hundred dollars or less (§ 18-13-111(1.5)(a)). Above three hundred dollars the buyer has to pay by check, unless the seller is paid by means of a process in which a picture of the seller is taken when the money is handed over (§ 18-13-111(1.5)(b)). That photograph alternative is what lets a yard settle a larger converter lot on the spot without writing a check.

Nothing in the section makes the buyer wait before paying, hold the converter for a set period, or send payment to a particular address. There is no statutory hold-notice procedure for commodity metals in § 18-13-111, so the retention periods that do exist attach to records rather than to metal: one hundred eighty days for the photographic or video record (§ 18-13-111(2)), ninety days for theft alerts (§ 18-13-111(1.3)(b)), and three years for the book or register (§ 18-13-111(4)).

One definitional point affects pricing paperwork rather than payment. There is a rebuttable presumption that metal a dealer buys for recycling is a commodity metal where it has a value of fifty cents per pound or more for recycling purposes (§ 18-13-111(6)), and commodity metal itself means copper, a copper alloy such as bronze or brass, or aluminum, excluding gold, silver, and platinum (§ 18-13-111(8)(b.5)). Detached converters are named separately from commodity metals throughout the section, so the converter rules apply to them whatever their metal content.

Penalties

Colorado grades violations by dollar amount rather than by conduct. Failing to keep a book or register, knowingly giving false information about what the register has to contain, or violating the scrap theft alert, payment, or photograph subsections is a petty offense below three hundred dollars, a class 2 misdemeanor from three hundred to under one thousand dollars, and a class 1 misdemeanor from one thousand to under two thousand dollars (§ 18-13-111(5)(a) to (c)). The ladder continues into felony territory: a class 6 felony from two thousand to under five thousand dollars, and a class 5 felony from five thousand to under twenty thousand dollars (§ 18-13-111(5)(d), (e)).

Above that the grades climb steeply. It is a class 4 felony from twenty thousand to under one hundred thousand dollars, a class 3 felony from one hundred thousand to under one million dollars, and a class 2 felony at one million dollars or more (§ 18-13-111(5)(f) to (h)). Because the seller's sworn affidavit is one of the items the register has to contain, a seller who signs a false ownership affidavit is exposed to the same grading as a buyer who keeps no register (§ 18-13-111(1)(c)(I), (5)).

The legislature declared converter and commodity metal theft a matter of statewide concern and encouraged both law enforcement and commercial stakeholders to join and report into the scrap theft alert system (§ 18-13-111(10)). The commodity metals theft task force that had coordinated that work was repealed in 2025, along with the reporting duties in § 18-13-111(12)(d) and (13)(d) that fed summaries to it, leaving the assessment report and inspection form in place (Senate Bill 25-171, § 2, repealing § 18-13-111(9), (12)(d), and (13)(d)).

What this means when you sell to us

Bring one of the six identification documents Colorado accepts, and be ready to sign the ownership affidavit we provide, sworn under penalty of law, for the converters you are selling (§ 18-13-111(1)(b), (1)(c)). We record the date, place, description, and quantity in our register, note how we verified your identification, and photograph both you and the units (§ 18-13-111(1)(d), (2)). Colorado allows cash up to three hundred dollars; above that we pay by check, or on the spot through a process that photographs you as the money changes hands (§ 18-13-111(1.5)).