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Just wondering if I remove IC chips from a High tel (or any grade for that matter) board to sell separately, will the board still be able to be sold in that category or will it get downgraded? Thanks for the insight!

Removing soldered IC will nearly always hurt your grade and the primary statement is it downgrades to mid grade or low grade instantly. (In reality asking and posting can guide you to rare choices that can dodge that to some degree).

Removing socketed ICs other than CPU and co- chips depends on the number of chips removed and the type of board they are in.
Eg a memory expansion board for a mini from 1980 fully populated is high telco but empty is midgrade.
Remove the roms from a commercial lazer printer and the board is still high peripheral.

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Thank you for the insight.

Low/Mid grade boards or Low grade brown boards, are the only boards you can remove as much of the ICs from and still class the same.

It is recommended to do so, if done correctly and neatly.

https://boardsort.com/escrapforum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=18925
It is on the Boardsort forum here.
You may want to review this.
Here to learn like everybody else.
My evaluations are my own opinion

I just saw that forum post. I asked the question there and I’ll ask it here: Will boards that have soldered flat packs pulled off accidentally because of removing a heat sink be automatically downgraded to mid grade even though the rest of the population of chips would keep it in the same category or drop it one category down? Example: removing a heat sink from what would obviously be a high peripheral and one flat pack comes off does that automatically downgrade the whole board to mid grade or is it still high peripheral because it has plenty of other chips on it?

It can.

If you have a heatsink that sounds like it's ripping the chip off the board, stop. Try adding some heat or freezing the board and carefully try again.

Alternatively, be prepared to secure that chip back to the board somehow so that Boardsort gets all the pieces and can see them at a glance if they look through your material.

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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

No: the rare accidental loss of a single component is not going to downgrade you.

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Appreciate the reasonableness!

I guess "it depends" would be a better answer. If you're shipping a gaylord full of high Telco and one or two chips were removed accidentally then it's definitely not something to worry about. If you're shipping a smaller box and Boardsort is likely to look at every board, it's possible the one board with a single gold tab bga that got ripped off and doesn't have much else to keep the grade high, will be downgraded if you didn't keep the chip with the board.

Not knowing your exact situation I erred on the side of being cautious.

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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