I am so confused about grading trimmed gold finger boards. There is literally a whole class dedicated to it, but just because it is a trimmed gold finger board doesn't mean it's a part of the trimmed gold finger board class? It can also be a high grade telecom board or a low grade peripheral board? Can someone PLEASE help me understand this? I have hundreds of these boards that someone gave to me this way. I did not trim them. I know it is not advantageous to do so. All of that aside, they are just trimmed gold finger boards now. It is my understanding that they cannot all be classified as such. It's extremely confusing. Any clarification would be appreciated. I would include pictures but there are so many and they are all different so it would be nearly impossible to do so. I just need to know what makes a trimmed gold finger board not a trimmed gold finger board!!!

Typically gold finger cards are video, network, or modem cards. There are many other types of boards with gold fingers, but that doesn't mean they fall in that class. Phone system boards with gold fingers probably get sorted as high grade telecom. Backplane boards could go either way depending on size and population. Check out some of the links below and see if that clears things up.

Typical gold finger cards
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=21752&p=43804&hilit=clean+gold+fingers#p43804

In this case board #2 was upgraded for having a high population of ICs
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=21700&p=43653&hilit=clean+gold+fingers#p43653

Just because it has gold fingers doesn't always mean it's a gold finger card.
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=21656&p=43483&hilit=Clean+gold+fingers#p43483

Backplane board with gold fingers graded as Gold Finger Board.
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=22786

This was so helpful! Thank you so much!! I'm just going to sort everything that I am 100% sure of and post the ones left over for help BUT this might take care of that need altogether! Thank you thank you thank you!

You're very welcome! I just realized that the links did not work, so I fixed them. Take a look at this post for explanation of other types of boards.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=21765