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 Post subject: Clean Gold Fingers
PostPosted: Tue Mar 26, 2019 3:17 am 

Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2014 12:19 pm
Posts: 95
About how many Clean Gold Fingers would it take to add up to a pound in weight?

The reason i ask is because i usually just send my Gold Finger Cards in as is, to get the $3.30 Gold Finger Cards price. Where if i trimmed each of those, i would turn that weight into only getting $1.35 per pound. I know the Clean Gold Fingers get me $25 per pound, but i feel i would lose more from what i get for the Finger cards than i would gain with the Clean Gold Fingers because of the lack of weight per Clean Gold Finger. Ive yet to trim any gold fingers, but i would like to increase my scrapping knowledge and turn everything into as much $$ as possible.

Is my assumption correct?


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 Post subject: Re: Clean Gold Fingers
PostPosted: Tue Mar 26, 2019 3:43 pm 
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No idea.

Unfortunately there’s no real single answer here.
Mind you first what boardsort is referring to is both the fingers (the gold line connectors and the edge connector they’re attached to.
As you’ll See shortly I point this out for a reason.
Let’s start with the fingers, the actual contacts. In the 70s and 80s these were thick, dark, relatively high purity. The misconception that more gold was used because of lack of understanding is a myth. The reality was manufacturing back then didn’t allow the same level of quality in micro-scale like we can do now.
The lower quality manufacturing of contacts, connectors, even sockets and slots... more, higher purity, gold was used to make up for manufacturing defaults.
As manufacturing progressed the quality went up and defect rates went down. The üSD cards of today were not possible in the 70s. Or 80s. Or even 90s.
As the defect rates dropped less and less gold, in thickness and purity, was needed to maintain reliable connections

Now the other half. Fingers need to be attached to something.
Today that’s just about anything.
Prior to the 70s glass and nickel were common for connectors. Look inside the highest grade of any AV equipment from the 60s and you’ll find lots of glass boards in them. But By the mid 70s glass was mostly eliminated, used then in only the most rare of cases such as extreme heat applications; eg betachord/Betamax units. 12mm projectors, studio cameras.
Prior to the mid 70s the other, and most common boards were a mix of plastic and wood; similar to particleboard. Through the 80s the plastic content went up and wood content went down. By the late 90s plastic was the main material, with low heat use of woodpulp and paper gaining use.
Why the long history? Well. Each generation of board production reduces the weight.
In short the ‘fingers’ from an m2 board weigh a fraction of the same size connector from a ESB board from 1982.

Where’s the cutoff? I’m not sure. I tend to look at the size of the board, and the age. Cutting the fingers off of ISA, NBA, ePCI, even older PCI... makes sense. PCIe, m2, not so much.
Then again many of those older cards are huge. Like the original SoundBlaster, AWE Wave, Rolland cards and the like. AEB cards... all of these are worth more in weight as a GFC than as fingers and Trimmed GFC.
So back to the beginning... there’s no clear answer.

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 Post subject: Re: Clean Gold Fingers
PostPosted: Wed Mar 27, 2019 10:26 am 

Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2014 12:19 pm
Posts: 95
Thank you for the knowledge! I know ive been posting a lot lately, but i am now really into Boardsort and want to make the most out of it!


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 Post subject: Re: Clean Gold Fingers
PostPosted: Wed Mar 27, 2019 10:30 am 
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Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:57 pm
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Location: Low DOS
FlyersMike wrote:
I know ive been posting a lot lately, but i am now really into Boardsort and want to make the most out of it!


Post away; that what the forum is for


EDIT
Re the post from boardsort below me
Boardsort wrote:
I'll chime in because this is something that I think needs to be considered.
...
Bottom line = Save your time and your trouble and keep the fingers on the board unless in the rare occasion that it will not effect the price of the board.

Just my 2 cents, or in this case 43 cents.

Thanks for posting the math. I’m not holding anything at the moment I was wanting to trim. ;)
As pointed out all over the forum, trimming fingers off is a bad idea in most cases. I only went so far here because the question comes up a lot. Are there minority cases where trimming makes sense. Sure. But ultimately you’re likely to cut fingers when you shouldn’t.
To more accurately fixate on my long above post... as I’ve pointed out elsewhere on the forum I tend to limit my trimming to very specific things. Western design boards, and IBM 300/600/700 series boards. All of which come close to a half pound worth of fingers on 3-5lb+ riser boards that will be telco with or without fingers. Here even mistakes are within a few percent of value.
Very old ISA cards, the full length type. Again card and fingers are both heavy.
I guess ultimately, again, it’s up to you the seller. But let me reiterate it’s rare to make more trimming.
I’m posting above this to leave BoardSort’s answer as the end to this particular discussion.

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 Post subject: Re: Clean Gold Fingers
PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 4:07 pm 
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Joined: Thu Sep 05, 2013 2:28 pm
Posts: 370
I'll chime in because this is something that I think needs to be considered.

There is a point where you can break material down too far and waste time and money as is this case here.

So in this particular situation I would stress Do Not Trim! Here is why:

For the most part, leaving the fingers on the card is the more profitable thing to do, by almost double, based on the calculations shared below.

There are two main reasons why people trim gold fingers:

1) They are chemically refining gold themselves and are incredibly efficient in their methods, or are doing so as a hobby where profit isn't as important.

2) They are trimming fingers from mid-grade boards (some high end power boards have a gold finger connector) where the trim will not effect the board price. (still midgrade with or without the finger).

Trimming fingers from "Gold Finger Cards" or "Gold Memory" devalues the item more than the combined weight and value of the board and its attached gold finger.

One Clean Gold Finger weighs about 1 gram, or 0.00220462 lbs.

An average Gold Finger Card weighs about 0.25 lbs. (generously)

The value of that one card with fingers intact, at today's rate of $3.30 per pound = $3.30 * 0.25 lbs = $0.83.

The value of that same card with the fingers removed at $1.35 per pound = $1.35 * 0.25 lbs = $0.34.

The value of the Clean Gold Finger removed from that card at $25 per pound = $25 * 0.00220462 lbs = $0.06.

Results:

The combined value of the trimmed fingerless card + the separate clean finger from it = $0.40

- vs -

The single value of the unmodified card with fingers intact = $0.83

Keep in mind these are average weights but as you can see there is quite a margin between the two.

Bottom line = Save your time and your trouble and keep the fingers on the board unless in the rare occasion that it will not effect the price of the board.

Just my 2 cents, or in this case 43 cents.


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