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So I've sent in 2 boxes so far, and they were fairly strait forward. I'm trying to put together another few groups and some of these categories are just so vague. I'm really good at knowing what the board was from and what the components are on the boards. But when it comes to these categories (or others I haven't listed) What are the differences and is there any kind of flow chart to follow?
1. high grade vs. low grade telecom. I would consider and communications product like a phone system, a IP phone, a network hub/switch, router csu/dsu and cable modem a Telco board. The pictures on the price list for High Grade are showing a Cisco board and some module boards (one even had a Dallas switch on it). The Low grade is showing a module board with more mechanical relays instead of IC's. When you're grading your boards what makes it into the High telecom box and the Low telecom box, and what doesn't get into either box? Am I right to say all communications products are Telco?
I have some large network switch boards that I would think was High Telcom, and some of them have the power supplies built onto the boards which adds a bunch of weight so I would think that would bump it down. thoughts? I could post some pictures if needed.

2. Peripheral High Grade vs. Low Grade. The High grade picture looks like an old serial modem, and the Low grade looks like an old cable box. Again what are the guidelines here?

I scrap a bunch of different stuff. there are a bunch of little boards that will have gold plated header pins and maybe a few small IC's. There are also some non motherboard boards that will have gold corner BGA chips on them.

3. is just a general question. do most of you remove heatsinks or leave them on? at 6$ a pound for high grade telecom those heatsinks are worth a lot more left on I would think. Do they have to come off? the pictures show them on.

I appreciate any input. I don't want to be the guy posting lots of pictures asking which bin this goes in. But if we had some sort of flow chart it could be very helpful and take out a lot of guess work.

# 3 Heat sinks are a no-no on boards in the high end categories. Why would you want to pay to ship extra weight, and why would Boardsort wish to pay you $6 a pound for heatsinks worth 35 cents a pound? Heat sinks are OK on the low and midgrade boards, as the clean aluminum is nearly the same as the category price for the boards.

Thanks Meowpher.
So for #3, of course that makes total sense for Boardsort. Kinda surprised they didn't make it more obvious. I was only mentioning because the pictures show the heatsinks still attached. And if I'm going to get $6 a pound for a board, and it's ok to have a heatsink attached, then I'll happily pay the shipping for the extra weight. My UPS rate was about $1 a pound. Since posting I did find an article that was suppose to be a sticky, but I didn't find stuck, that mentioned removing all heatsinks and all batteries. So I think #3 is answered.
What about #1 and #2 ?
Also I see a bunch of mention of Midgrade, but there is only high and low in the Telcom and peripheral categories that I see, and if it is much lower that $1.50 a pound I'm not going to bother, since my shipping is about $1 a pound.

When you look at a picture of a rabbit, you see it with all the attendant hair and ears and feet on the picture, not after it is dressed for the frying pan. Removing the inedible stuff doesn't make it less rabbit but it raises the value per pound. The definition peripheral used to be a nice populated board that didn't quite make Motherboard classification but usually included gold pin connectors and generally required the removal of heatsinks and transformers and heavy metal shields/covers etc. Now there is the low peripheral class, which is less sparsely populated with components of value, and more blank space. One note: just because a board comes from a "telcom" device doesn't make it telecom. Amount of valuable chips compared to the overall area is a major factor, while miniaturization of the chips hurts the value.

Zenophryk,

I can weigh in here also.
Chris had a posting in 2021 explaining the "new" categories, i.e high and low grade peripheral/telecom. Paraphrasing, most peripheral boards that you find will be in the high grade category (95%) the other small amount gets lumped into the low grade category based on population or lack thereof. Those low grade peripheral boards being slightly better than midgrade, use your judgement there, or ask Chris.
Telecom has always been tricky, whether you're a seller to Boardsort or a larger entity that deals with refineries. Telecom boards as you know them can range from a couple bucks a pound to 10+ on the backend depending entirely upon population density and age, among others. The price paid is an estimate based on loads sent out by Boardsort previously. We recently received boards straight from a telecom site decommissioning; some were higher end (10) and some were straight garbage (low or mid grade) the rest in between, so the tricky part is trying to determine a number for those and to also minimize downside risk.
The trick here as is the norm, is to look at chip population and density on the board, use that to determine high or low value.
Again, you will never be penalized for asking Chris ahead of time to see what he would buy it at.

I understand your frustration! When I first found Boardsort and started trying to classify boards I thought the classification was based on the function of the board, like you said if it comes out of a telephone system it should be one of the two types of Telco board. I have figured out since then that classification method is not correct. Just like when the hard drive board class split into two types of board based on the connector style only (that is the easiest way to split the class), but there are many IDE boards that have the same population as SATA board. The same with gold finger cards, just because it has gold fingers doesn't mean it will be in that class. I have some boards that were upgraded from gold finger to high telco because of the number of ICs on them and I have some that barley make low peripheral class because of heavy transformers. I have a Cisco router board now that looks like low peripheral because it has so much blank space. Don't let the technical description of the board get in the way of the "art of classification" :)

Check this post and see if it helps your understanding, then add comments of posts you find that help clarify classification for you.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=21765