Check out
Lostinlodos' post, as well as the other stickied posts and announcements at the top of the forum. There's a lot of good info in there including:
lostinlodos wrote:
never remove:
Anything else unless your told so.
So, no, don't remove.
The reason for this is there are a ton of boards that are fairly standardized in their construction so Boardsort knows, with a fair amount of accuracy, what they're worth intact. If everyone sending in boards started knocking off the gold pins or ICs then boards lose value and Boardsort can't pay us as well as they do.