Mid-grade/high grade boards and defining them

Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

GavinSean

Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2019
Messages
6
My definition of a high grade board used to be a board with a chip that had a gold corner. What do you go by? I found a network phone with such a board in it but not sure it would be a high grade board.

Example: https://imgur.com/gallery/BXBqJuh
 
This is a very subjective determination that is based upon your buyer.

I would expect that board to go midgrade high with Cashforcomputerscrap. Mario (the owner) is on the board, his name is ewasted

When the board gets small, and the chip gets large, it can get pushed over to telecom.

That specific type of board, small board, BGA chips, can easily go in to something that is worth a reasonable amount of money, but it's a determination that takes a reasonable amount of skill, as well as selective depopulation and calculations to make.

But honestly, I have always found Mario's grading to be fair on a good majority of what you'll see in modern electronics. That's after a lot of fire assays.
 
GavinSean said:
My definition of a high grade board used to be a board with a chip that had a gold corner.

That chip is known as a N/S Bridge BGA chip - having one of those on a board - in & off it's self is not what determines the grade of the board (it doesn't automatically make it a "high" grade board) The grade of a board is determined by many other factors such as what else is on the board &/or what else is not on the board

The board in the pic is considered a "peripheral" which depending on buyer &/or current (it time of selling) gold price

Currently Boardsort has that board listed at $1.50 per pound --- cashforcomputerscrap has it listed at $2 per pound (not sure how current that price is - it could be lower with current gold price dropping)

The N/S Bridge BGA chip in & of it's self is a HIGH grade chip - but if it's on the board with little else on the board - or has a lot of other JUNK on the board - the grade (price) of the board will be mid/peripheral - not high grade

Kurt
 
$2/lb is a recent adjustment, it was at $2.15. I doubt it will drop further.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Most VOIP business phones will have a nice mid-grade board in them. A lot of older Cisco phones, like the 7400 and 7900 series phones have a nice board that will go telecomm. I have scrapped 1000's of these phones, and still have 1000's of them to do. 3 phones make's just over a pound on telecom scrap, each phone takes about a minute, so the value is there. We have a whole gaylord of mixed VOIP phones that we don't take apart because they are difficult or take too much time. Anyone who comes by can have the whole gaylord, and it's a tall one, full!
 
snoman701 said:
That specific type of board, small board, BGA chips, can easily go in to something that is worth a reasonable amount of money, but it's a determination that takes a reasonable amount of skill, as well as selective depopulation and calculations to make.

Could you explain this bit to me? When you say it could go into something, do you mean be re-sold to someone who will use it in a device? When you say selective depopulation, is that referring to keeping on things that add weight while removing other components that can have their own value?
 
No...small board, lots of chips, low board weight, high chip density = better grading.

Selective depopulation...removing things like transformers, electrolytic capacitors, etc...these offer no value to the refiner, so by removing them, you can sometimes bump up the grade of the board.

This can work to your negative as well. Have a telecom board, remove fingers and a couple chips, now it's a midgrade board (or worse).
 
Back
Top