Selling a catalytic converter in Missouri

Who may sell a detached converter

Missouri does not restrict converter sales to licensed businesses. It restricts where they happen. No transaction that includes a detached converter may occur at any location other than the fixed place of business of the purchaser or collector of, or dealer in, junk, scrap metal, or any secondhand property (§ 407.300(4)). Everything else runs through the register: every purchaser, collector, or dealer who obtains items for resale or profit keeps a register with a written or electronic record for each purchase or trade of a covered material, with a separate record for each transaction (§ 407.300(1)).

The covered list is short and specific. It runs to copper, brass, or bronze; aluminum wire, cable, pipe, tubing, bar, ingot, rod, fitting, or fastener; material containing copper or aluminum knowingly used for farming purposes as farming is defined in § 350.010, whatever the condition or length of the metal; a detached catalytic converter; and a motor vehicle, heavy equipment, or tractor battery (§ 407.300(1)(1) to (5)).

Two categories of transaction sit outside the section. Any transaction where the seller has an existing business relationship with the scrap metal dealer and is known to the dealer to be an established business or political subdivision operating from a fixed location that can reasonably be expected to generate regulated scrap metal and can reasonably be identified as such, and where the seller is paid by check or electronic funds transfer or produces acceptable identification, being a copy of a state or federal government-issued driver license or photo identification that the purchaser retains (§ 407.300(6)(1)). And any transaction where the covered metal is a minor part of a larger item, except for heating and cooling equipment or equipment used in generating and transmitting electrical power or telecommunications (§ 407.300(6)(2)).

What the buyer must record

The register record for each transaction holds a copy of the driver license or photo identification issued by the state or by the United States government or an agency of it, belonging to the person the material came from (§ 407.300(2)(1)). It holds that person's current address, gender, birth date, and a color photograph where those are not included in, or differ from, the identification produced (§ 407.300(2)(2)). So a photograph is taken whenever the identification does not already supply the details.

The rest is transaction data. The record holds the date, time, and place of the transaction, the license plate number of the vehicle the seller used during the transaction, and a full description of the material including its weight and purchase price (§ 407.300(2)(3) to (5)). There is no separate signed ownership statement or thumbprint requirement in the section, so the identification copy, the photograph where needed, and the description carry the weight.

Records are kept for a minimum of thirty-six months from when the material is obtained and are available for inspection by any law enforcement officer (§ 407.300(3)). Missouri does not require a daily or next-day report into a state database under this section, so the records sit with the buyer until an officer asks for them (§ 407.300(3)). Two related sections restrict what may be bought at all, which matters where converters arrive with other material. No scrap metal dealer may knowingly purchase or possess a metal beer keg, damaged or undamaged, or any reasonably recognizable part of one, on premises used to buy, sell, store, shred, melt, cut, or otherwise alter scrap metal, except where the purchase is from the brewer or its authorized representative (§ 407.301(1)). And no scrap yard may purchase metal identifiable as belonging to a public or private cemetery, political subdivision, telecommunications, cable, wireless, or other communications provider, electrical cooperative, water utility, municipal utility, or regulated utility, including specified telecommunications wiring, bleachers, guardrails, signs, street and traffic lights or signals, and manhole covers, from anyone other than that owner or the manufacturer, unless the seller is authorized in writing by the owner or manufacturer to sell it (§ 407.302(1)).

How you are paid

Missouri allows cash, with a threshold and an identification condition. Any scrap metal dealer paying out five hundred dollars or more has to make the payment by issuing a prenumbered check drawn on a regular bank account in the name of the licensed dealer, payable to the person documented as the seller, or by using a system for automated cash or electronic payment distribution that photographs or videotapes the payment recipient and identifies the payment with a distinct transaction in the register (§ 407.303(1)). Below five hundred dollars no method is prescribed.

Converters carry an extra condition where cash is used. Any scrap metal dealer that buys scrap metal and pays in cash is required to obtain a copy of the seller's driver license or nondriver license where the metal is copper or a catalytic converter (§ 407.303(2)). That requirement does not apply to a transaction where the seller has an existing business relationship with the dealer and is known to the dealer to be an established business or political subdivision operating from a fixed location that can reasonably be expected to generate regulated scrap metal and can reasonably be identified as such (§ 407.303(2)).

The metal is held for five business days. No detached converter may be altered, modified, disassembled, or destroyed until it has been in the purchaser's, collector's, or dealer's possession for five business days (§ 407.300(4)). That is a processing restriction rather than a payment delay, so a seller can be paid at the transaction while the unit itself stays intact and identifiable for the week that follows.

Penalties

The general offense is graded by repetition. Any person who knowingly and willfully violates §§ 407.300 to 407.303 is guilty of a class B misdemeanor and a fine of up to five hundred dollars for a first offense, a class A misdemeanor and a fine of up to one thousand dollars for a second offense, and faces revocation of any and all business licenses held with the state for a third offense (§ 407.303(3)). Anyone in violation of those sections by selling stolen scrap metal is responsible for consequential damages related to obtaining the scrap metal (§ 407.303(4)).

Buying a stolen converter carries its own ladder for licensed businesses. Anyone licensed under § 301.218 who knowingly purchases a stolen detached converter is subject to a fine of five thousand dollars for a first violation, ten thousand dollars for a second, and revocation of the license for the business described under § 301.218 for a third (§ 407.300(5)). Those fines sit on top of, rather than in place of, the misdemeanor grading in § 407.303(3).

The two restricted-material sections carry their own penalties. Anyone found guilty of, or pleading guilty to, purchasing or possessing a prohibited metal beer keg is guilty of a class A misdemeanor punishable only by fine, and the section does not preclude prosecution for any other applicable criminal offense (§ 407.301(2)). Anyone convicted of buying identifiable cemetery, public body, or utility metal outside the permitted sources is guilty of a class B misdemeanor (§ 407.302(2)).

What this means when you sell to us

Missouri requires the converter transaction to happen at our fixed place of business, not anywhere else (§ 407.300(4)). Bring a state or federal government-issued license or photo ID; we copy it, and where it does not carry your current address, gender, and birth date we record those and take a color photograph (§ 407.300(2)(1), (2)). We log the date, time, place, your plate number, and a full description of each unit with weight and price, and keep the register thirty-six months (§ 407.300(2), (3)). Payments of five hundred dollars or more come as a prenumbered check payable to you, or through a photographed automated distribution; if you take cash for a converter we have to keep a copy of your license (§ 407.303(1), (2)).