We made a few changes to our price list which I feel the need to share some details about. The grades that were updated were the Cell Phones and the Peripheral Board.
I will begin with the Cell Phones. Over time, phone manufacturers have been moving towards larger screens which require larger batteries. Both of these "improvements" along with the continued miniaturization of circuitry has led to a serious decline in value in the cell phone category. The battery takes up so much room that the circuit board which only a few years ago occupied 90% of the phones case now sits in just 20%. They rest is battery and screen. The values are in the board not the rest of the phone.
As the older flip and hard key phone fall away from the recycle pile and the smart phone slowly dominates the collection there has been a steady decline in the return values. So much less that we are being forced to segregate the newer from the older, much like what started happening with pc motherboards about 10 years ago.
So we have 3 categories now instead of two for cell phones.
- MODERN SMART PHONE NO BATTERY NO BACK -
A smart phone is any modern cell phone with an all glass front and no keys. A perfect example is a Galaxy, HTC, Droid etc. 99% of all modern phones purchased today will be in this category. The battery door must be removed exposing the empty battery compartment. No battery should be installed.
- OLDER CELL PHONE WITH KEYPAD NO BATTERY NO BACK
An older cell phone is pretty much any Hand Held cell phone that does not fit the smart phone description. Flip Phone, Blackberry, Nokia, old school brick phone for example. The battery door must be removed exposing the empty battery compartment. No battery should be installed.
- ANY CELL PHONE WITH BATTERY INSTALLED
If the phone still has the battery installed, no matter if it is smart or not it will be graded this way. I-PHONES are a perfect example of this. Even though they are a technically a smart phone, the battery is non-removable.
As technology moves forward and the manufacturing process becomes cheaper due to the lesser use of precious metals and the miniaturization the recycling value of those items will trend downward as well. Cell Phones are a perfect example.
The other change is in our Peripheral Grade. We split it into 2 different grades, HIGH and LOW.
- PERIPHERAL HIGH GRADE
This is pretty much the same category as it was before. Nothing has really changed here. 90% of the Peripheral board that you have been sorting will fall into this category.
The challenge we have been facing is what to do with the board that is not good enough for Peripheral? In the past it would likely fall all the way down to Midgrade. That is a FAR DROP from $2.25/lb (as of this writing) to $0.30. Ouch!
Same thing on the flip side of that, there are boards that appear to be worth more than $0.30 but would be a money loser at $2.25.
There have been times in the past when I would tell a customer to grade a particular board as Connector Ends or some odd lower priced item in order to avoid putting the board in the basement of our price sheet.
Now we have Peripheral Low Grade. This is our stop gap measure to help with boards that just do not quite make the muster.
If you look at the example of a low Periph on our price list (click on the Item Names to see pics) you will see a green board that is extremely sparse in the way of population. The board is 64 square inches and has only 4 itty bitty ic chips (they are not even good ones). The small black objects that look like ic's are not, they are actually tiny copper coils made of thread wire, barely recoverable. There is just no way this board would generate $2.25/lb for us.
Granted, this is not a common board and as stated much of what we found in our previous Peripheral Grade would now qualify as High Peripheral so there is no reason to be concerned. If you make a mistake and throw low into high do not fear, I will make the correction for you with no problems.
I know if can be frustrating as a customer when we continue to add categories. But please know that it is a result of us trying to preserve the higher pay rates for the older stuff while at the same time balancing the decline of the newer material.
The alternative would be to keep the grades the same and just pay less across the board. We chose to expand the categories instead.
Thank you for choosing boardsort.com!
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