Thanks for the continued education, lost. Another question - I have about 65 of these metal socket motherboards. About the best rate I can get is $1.05/lb for shipping, but if not optimal size/weight, probably more like $1.25/lb. As I understand it, the current price today on these is $1.75/lb. I can certainly ship them for $0.50/lb net, but is there a better strategy for scrapping high value pieces off them?

Also - I am obviously new to the board and am trying to follow the rules. If continued questions in the same thread is inappropriate or bad form, please advise.

Follow ups are fine. I split this since we’re changing the topic.

Let me be very clear before I answer this question:
Boardsort absolutely frowns upon unsanctioned stripping.

That nasty bit out of the way, you could… but the effort is more costly than the result. So your time vs scrap loss locally is the big decision for you. There’s nothing you can remove to reduce the weight without dropping out of the motherboard class to midge or low.

Your BEST bet is to LTL if you have over 100lbs, or use FedEx which still gives significant savings for multi box shipping via their business account invoicing. FedEx ships multi by total girth plus weight, not by weight alone. 4 four inch cubes costs less than one 16 inch cube. Wide, flat boxes cost less than cubes. Ever notice the bizarre sizes Amazon uses? Or how a 4 ounce pad of paper ships in a 22x18x2 inch box “pointlessly”?
Commercial shipping is a real life game of Tetris. The more accommodating the box, the less it costs.
Weight is a distant secondary factor for ground shopping. Because a 53’ trailer needs to be 60-80k lbs or less. 50k for most rail loads.
Unlike the post office where a large amount of “ground” shipments end up on airplanes, where weight is the most important component. Or UPS which uses a lot of rail service

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the only way to recover that class difference is a complete bare strip.

So, you would recover CMCs (ceramic monolithic capacitors), tantalum, and gold plate. The real value that’s “easy” to get. And a small pile of IC chips.
Averages…
Assuming you went bare board, you’ll walk away with an ounce of tantalum, a quarter ounce of CMCs or less, and an ounce of gold plated steel.
Not fun right? Boardsort doesn’t even buy CMCs. So your walk away here is under $1.50 per board for 30-45 minutes of work each. Ouch.
Remember you need to remove the pins from those peripheral connectors, the PCIe sockets, and the pads from the chip holder. Otherwise they go as much lower value connector ends.

What else is there? Well; steel, 400 series. About a half cent per lb. Stainless 304 and 308, maybe a few 302 thumb screws. All in the 30cent per lb range and we’re still talking grams, not ounces here.
Brass, a few grams. Tin plate. Some cobalt ceramic resistors. You’ll get a few cents worth of nickel.
Collect and clean filter the solder and you have a few ounces of clean tin. A lot of plastic.
A larger yard will give you a class 4 copper recovery for the bare board (low grade rate give or take).

Add those bga ICs and you can hope to get to $1. Maybe.

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Thanks lost. This is what I was expecting. And to be clear - in no way attempting to skirt Boardsort rules, just seeing what is out there as a newbie.

Not at all. Just pointing to the basic mistake that once you start removing, you quickly loose your grade.
It’s a common mistake.

To be as brutally blunt as I can be, many people new to scrapping see ‘ohh shiny’ and wind up loosing most of the value. Need only look up refine gold on any tube tumbler to see that disaster.

Remove shields. Remove heatsinks. Remove batteries.

Shipping hints.
Flip boards against each other. Top to bottom.
Use zip ties, making Xs or +s. Holding boards together. A bag of 75 HD 18” zip ties costs as low as $2. Money well spent. You can extend them by combining one to another. I strap boards tight before boxing. They won’t move and break the box, they stay together. Everyone is happy.
Use balls of wire at the corners of boxes. That way your packaging weight is still paid for.
Use prescription and OTC bottles for smaller things. Eg if chips fit nicely in an rx bottle and flatpacks in a large Advil bottle. Pins etc.
you know understand the truck company is going to play Tetris. Do it yourself with your packages.

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One more hint. Produce

Go to the grocer and ask for Apple or lemon boxes. The kind without handles. The bottoms they display on the shelf has a slip over top. These boxes are lite weight but very strong

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