Most of the processors I acquire are of this type. Do I have to remove the metal top to attain full selling price? If so is there an easier way to do it? As you can see, my attempt to remove the metal top has damaged the silicone chip and taken at least some of the gold with it. As these are high value items, I don't want to ruin them.

No, you don't have to remove the metal tops. It is the same grade with or without the metal tops. Generally you will lose money because the cpu weights less.

So Green Fiber CPUs are broken down into:

Pinless: $5.75 currently

Fiber with Metal (has pins): $8.25 currently

Fiber no Metal (has pins): $15.00 currently

Looks like three of yours were Fiber w/metal and one Pinless, and are now three Fiber no metal and (actually I'm not 100% sure on the one) Pinless.

Boardsort has their prices set so that you make more by not removing the metal caps. The caps are primarily copper but have several other metals that, since boardsort gets tons of them, whoever they sell to knows they'll get certain quantities of those metals which increases the value. By removing the caps you lose that known value and also damage the CPU losing weight and value there.

I tried removing them once for a shipment to see if I could get more into a box and see if selling the copper locally would be worth it. Definitely wasn't. So unless you have a specific reason to do so I wouldn't.

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My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort