First welcome. From watching these forums for a while, most serious grade experts will not reply to so many pictures in one post. Also, unless the backs are completely blank, picture them as well. If you are looking for grading help from an experienced amateur then read on. If you are looking for what to remove to sell on another site, say an auction site, then go do your research there. Removing anything that is not junk weight or in a socket (see below, what is considered junk on the really old boards may have a lot of value in other forums) will basically ruin the value of the board. Some junk weight is figured into categories. See the linked videos in the price list, they are great information and dispel some really common myths on this forum. I am just feeling somewhat comfortable as a beginner on grading, mostly from watching Chris' videos and reading a lot of lost-in-lobos posts. I mostly scrap old scientific equipment as well and have done a lot of research on those boards. Very difficult to classify some of them, components are too old to be recognized for what they are. Take for example those little water tower looking things. They are transistors if they have 3 legs and the multileg ones are integrated circuits (IC). They often have gold legs or a little gold tab meaning that there is more gold on the bottom or inside. The bigger ones like on board 44 are mostly transistors and can have gold plated legs, gold heat sinks and gold inside. Generally they seem to be considered junk, at least based on how Chris referred to a larger metal capped transistor in one of the videos. If you have a lot, like many odd items you can ask Chris directly. I have not built up enough and they really vary. As for the boards as they appear: Take off all wire. Take off all screwed on metal that is not gold (i.e. card 38). Take off all heat sinks. Watch the videos. Boards 47-50 are low grade. Heavy with "junk" as Chris puts it, and little to no precious metals. Same for 36,40,41 and several others. Take the metal off of 38 and you should get backplane rate (see the picture in the price list for backplane) 37 is peripheral high grade once cleaned 42 is High telecom, pull the ram to sell separately it doesn't downgrade the board. 45 and 46 also probably high tele. 43 is gold finger ram 44 is probably peripheral high, but you might need to remove the heat sink and Motorola transistor, which are sodered on from experience. 26 is at the break of peripheral low grade and mid grade. I would lean mid grade due to the powerpack daughter board 31 and 32 are peripheral high grade. I will skip ahead as there are a lot of duplicate of the above grades here Board 6 has two Motorola gold CPU chips. If socketed remove them and sell separately for $215 per pound (sorry never run across one to tell you how many in a pound) and the board remains a high telecom. With them attached this is a gold cap/gold edge/CNC. Board 6 is not clear as to the white ceramic chip. If gold capped then the board is a gold cap/gold edge/CNC, if not then high tele. However, these white ceramic chips sometimes demand a premium as collectors items. There is an exception to cutting off gold: The gold fingers on these boards probably won't be accepted in the gold fingers class as they did not come from "gold finger cards" (think the slot cards in computers) or ram. However, cutting them off probably won't devalue the cards (watch the video on high telecom at 2:13 he shows an old board that has had the fingers cut off). Unless you have a use for them or a lot of them, however I would just leave them especially if they are the only visible gold on a high telecom board.
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