What thieves seem to go for nowdays is the d-gps hardware installed in graders / excavators used in large projects. Very expensive stuff which is easy to hide. A Leica 3d kit is something like $40k...

I've heard the same[1], but that kind of thing seems trivially easy to track down, no?

[1]In fact I was involved on a project where some thieves took a sawzall to the equipment storage conex over the weekend and stole every bit of GPS equipment they could get their hands on. They were pretty quickly tracked down when they tried to offload it though.

Could sell it outside of the country? It does make me wonder.