You didn’t. That’s exactly my point. When in doubt ask.

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Thank you for helping us scrappers understand what the process looks like on your end. I have learned a lot from reading and asking questions and I appreciate the resource!

So I am curious as to what exactly is the process to accomplish this: "We often have to tell a customer that the items that they sent have 0 value to us. Had they checked with me 1st before shipping the item I could have told them that they would be wasting their money on shipping sending items that we do not buy."
What is the process of getting a determination prior to shipping your boards?
I have posted question about grades on the "What is it? Identification Forum" and got a couple of responses ranging from Low Telco to maybe High Peripheral. It was also suggested I remove some items from at least one of the boards to get the best grade. But of course there is the statement "Do not remove anything unless you are told to do so" (might not be exact quote). I am assuming a respondent on "What is it? Identification" is not actually the person who would tell me this for certain as they are not a rep of Boardsort.

I am sorry for my lack of experience dealing with this but if I send in pounds of boards to Boardsort, isn't it like closing the barn door after the horse has escapes? My submission is at Boardsort and wow I should have removed those items or I did remove them and no I should not have removed them. I get removing the metal shielding covering circuitry but it was suggested I remove a connection interface from the card. However it looks like a similar type of connector is pictures on the low grade Telco item pictured on the "Payout Rates" pictures examples.
Based on the breakdown of parts you all clearly seem to have great payout prices and if I lived locally it would be fantastic but I do not and shipping definitely impact the decision on what to ship and whether anything should be pulled from the cards. I could easily have 200 of the cards in the post in question. Screwing up and shipping them in wrong or maybe not shipping them in at all would be best for me but how do you get a better on the grade of the cards. If I got 5, 10 or 15 responses saying Low Telco or High Peripheral I would feel pretty confident but without such a response, should I send in a sample of the boards for determination? I can do that but I seems that could get to be a pain for the staff dealing such deliveries.

Few things here.
Everyone here (spam excluded) wants every one else to be happy and tries to be as accurate as possible.

Look at post counts and/ or join date.
If you see someone with 100+ posts say ‘this is high peripheral’ you can be fairly confident it is.

When still on doubt, email me your post link. This works with no reply after a few days too, or if there’s conflicting replies.
Click on my profile name and click contact. Shoot me an email.

Just use subject BoardSort. My email forwards it to a priority box.
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Grading is subjective. It’s not, and never can be an exact art.
Even when an item is known to be 100% identical 100% of the time there’s still pricing variations on where it ultimately goes. Prices in Columbus Ohio and Columbus Georgia and Columbus Illinois will all be different. Slightly. And a difference of a few cents per item can change a class payout overall. Making a borderline item in bulk raise or lower a whole train load of scrap. Boardsort isn’t the final destination.

Beyond that, there’s more than one employee. And since there’s literally billions of cards with thousands of variations,? No matter how much thought and training goes into it a card may be taken differently depending on the employee.

I still scan the what is it posts. Especially longer ones. And it’s not rare I see 10 people say it’s one thing and I think, “that’s not what I would have said”.
This usually happens on borderline items. Does that extra 2 rj45 connectors knock it out of telco?
Does the giant ASIC boost it enough?
Does ‘8 ounces of copper’ boost an AIO mobo from laptop to telco?

You can generally depend on long-time or mega posters to be close enough that if your ‘wrong’ you can ask Chris for a review.

Just be reasonable in doing so. A single card or board? Oops and move on.
But when 50lbs of low telco is taken as high peripheral and you have a mega poster say low telco. A review request is acceptable.

No two people will ever agree 100% of the time and Chris is both honest and reasonable. I’ve been doing this for decades, predating any actual escrap industry. I still make mistakes.
Network boards and over the top high end cards still throw me for a loop.
The difference between gold flashing (bling) and gold layers is not a sight thing. It’s experience.
The latter is rare but makes the difference between high peripheral and high telco.
Gold etch vs gold trace.
Silver solder vs tin.
The previous mentioned ASRock and EVGA use of thick heavy copper layers.
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Remove heatsinks. Remove shields. And you can safely pull (up and off) mega canister capacitors.
Everything else is generally not a good idea.

Removing a transformer from an otherwise high telco board? Takes precision and skill to not make a low peripheral (or worse) board with the slightest mistake.
Yes, there are rack relay twisted pair boards that could go from low telco to high by removing the connector gang. But pulling that off is more than cutting or snapping.
I do the former often enough.
I won’t try the latter.

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Everything Lostinlodos said :D

I do my best to grade what I know and be clear when I'm not sure about something. I do tend to grade lower if I'm guessing so that if you send in a box of stuff I thought would clear high peripheral but some of it's actually low telco and the guys at Boardsort are nice enough to pull it to weigh separately it's a pleasant surprise instead of expecting it to be high telco and only getting low telco.

And you're right most, if not all of us, are not representatives of Boardsort. We're just a community of people who try to help each other out.

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Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

I believe Chris (Boardsort) is the only one who pops in. And out.
(I hade an m2 drive so that for a Few months too, so I gave it a new home in a thunderbolt case).

It’s simply put at no two people will 100% agree 100% of the time.
I under grade anything I have the slightest doubt on. Or ask. Mainly because I have too much experience and history on the component aspect of it.
That makes me partial to certain things. Favouritism and all that.
I’ll always take the lower approach. And again, boardsort is one of the honest ones. Despite the pick-it-up-n-weigh-it statement: they do actually look at ever piece that comes in.

Ideally we’d all be perfect. But rest assured out errors, when they do happen on occasion, will be seen. Better I be under. And you get more.

Again. Click my profile and contact me if needed. Or email or call Chris directly.

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UPDATE:

It has been brought to my attention by a customer who apparently misunderstood what I wrote with respect to sending e-soup.

"DO NOT DO IT".

Hopefully that clears up any misconception. I know I previously made mention of sort fee's etc. but that is NOT an invitation to send me boxes of rubbish mixed with low value scrap in hopes that I will sort it out and find some higher value material sprinkled in. Our sorting is for correcting simple mistakes, and not to be used as a service.

So let me be absolutely clear:

"If you send me materials that are clearly unsorted I will not sort them out. It will be purchased as a mix and that value will be determined AT THAT TIME." I will consider the time, labor and inconvenience in that rate, but do not be surprised if it is Low Grade or less. You WILL lose money. I'm sorry. I will do everything I can to prevent you from losing money, up to the point when you ship, then it is on you.

Folks have been much better with respect to sorting and packing once this thread was started back in 2021.

At the time of this reply it has 77,717 views and it really has helped ensure that customers are receiving the service and payout that they expect by letting them know ahead of time what not to do.

So, allow me to once again reiterate:

DO NOT SHIP UNSORTED, UNGRADED MATERIALS. They will not be sorted, it will be purchased as a mix, or depending on how bad it is, may not be purchased at all. (you would be surprised)

- If it doesn't appear on our price list, don't send it (unless arrangements previously made)

- If it is not graded (or grading arrangement previously made) don't send it.

- If you do not know what it is, don't send it.

That should clear things up.

E-Soup is evil.

I should have read this before trying to pick components off a bunch of boards, including MLCCs, IC chips, etc.

If I have a lot of peripheral, telecom, and PC motherboards with removed components like that, how would you grade them? What's the easiest way I can make that question clearer, because basically what I've got is a mishmash of stuff and not all boards are stripped to the same degree. Before I discovered Boardsort I was stupid enough to try to do my own stripping, and I quickly learned that I'm not competent enough.

I'd like to send in everything I have, and I'd even accept the lowest rate but I'd like to know what that is. Would pics help?

Your best shot is to post pics in the what is it topic.

The generic rule is once you start removing components it becomes midgrade.
In reality with proper review things are less a or b.

The forum has some first class graders to help you out.

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I've been an Ebayer and Scrapper for many years. The best thing I've found to wrap things up nice and tight before placing them in the shipping box are the hand held Stretch Wrap rolls you can get from your nearest Home Depot. They keep everything nice and tight, help stop items from moving or shifting in the box, and adds a bit of protection at the same time. Also, it's easy for the destination crew to simply cut the stretch wrap off with a razor knife or scissors. This works great for Ebay items that need to be shipped. I have yet to try this for Boardsort, though, so I don't know if the people at Boardsort would go for this.