Happy New Year to all. I have a long shot question for the group and it can't hurt to at least ask. Is there anyone here who lives in the Chicago area that would be willing to come for a couple hours to help ID organize and share any insight about PCB's? I would obviously compensate you for your time, but I have been fortunate in my start into E-watse scrapping and am a bit overwhelmed and want to learn more and not post a thousand pictures if I can avoid it. I have looked at the posts for hours and have a grasp on most things, but still uncertain I it not a low grade or motherboard. Thanks all in advance and may 2026 be good to all.

Unfortunately I'm in Texas... I'm sure there's people nearer you, hopefully one of them will have some availability.

In the meantime, you can probably do some basic sorting/organizing. If your supply is pretty consistent and you get the same boards over and over, you can sort all the same stuff into separate containers without having to immediately know the grade.

If you understand that gold fingers/pins, ICs, tantalum make the board worth more and steel, aluminum and plastic make the board worth less (not worthless hopefully) then you could roughly organize your containers into groups of more and less value.

I will add, though there's more detailed posts elsewhere, low grade is typically brown boards with no precious metals, so should be fairly easy to get all that sorted out.
Midgrade is basically the same as low (the prices stay basically the same) except there's components containing gold or other precious metals.

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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