smussler Loc: Land O Lakes, FL - Formerly Miller Place, NY

I just did a search for refurbished cards. NewEgg - first hit - has lots of them. No reviews on any that I looked at-each said "be first to review". Satisfaction ratings were around 80%. Sounds like something to avoid.

Sidwalkastronomy Loc: New Jersey Shore

BH 64g for under $20. extreme pro 160 speed. my # may be slightly off

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

They clean the contacts and case.
Maybe test the cells? That's all they can do.
I've no idea of the cost on refurbs. New 16Gb Sandisk are $6 to $8 at B&H.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

First, there is a limited number of write / erase cycles on NAND Flash cards. If you buy used, you have no idea how many of those have been used up

Secondly, exposure to ESD (static) discharges (especially SD cards with exposed contacts) may not immediately kill a card, but each exposure degrades the junction until it finally does. When you buy used, you have no idea how the card was stored or handled and exposed to ESD.

Finally, your chances of getting a counterfeit card (which are very prevalent in the market) are higher when purchasing used from an unverified source than purchasing from a reputable dealer.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

That's why they are cheap. For a low enough price, I would buy a whole crate of them.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

And risk the data that you spent all that $ on camera equipment and your time to acquire?

smussler Loc: Land O Lakes, FL - Formerly Miller Place, NY

Here's a link to amazon for 3 64GB cards for $39.99
Why Buy Refurbished ? And check the 128GB pricing!!

Couldn't pass that up, just ordered 3 myself, with amazon rewards credit - less than $9 a card . . .

And I just cancelled the order upon reading the reviews . . . They might be fine, but . . .
Only bad cards I ever purchased - off of Amazon . . .

Canisdirus

You get what you pay for in this world.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Sidwalkastronomy Loc: New Jersey Shore

B and H under $20 64 g

topcat Loc: Alameda, CA

In the past, I have purchased a few "refurbished" cards on eBay. I have never had a problem with them. Now with the price going down, I don't have to use that source anymore.

Adorama has Fuji film 64 GB for $9.99. Can't beat that price.

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

Let me first say that there is no such thing as refurbishing a memory card. The chips inside are sealed and there is nothing external that can be done to the card to make it work better.

A second point is that memory cards do wear out. The Flash memory erase process slowly wears out a card. And random bits will go bad over time. Most of the time, there are not enough of these bad bits to overwhelm the error correction that the chips use but the day is coming when the card will fail.

Internally, the Flash chips employ block replace strategies and perhaps column replace strategies at testing during manufacturing. Once the chips are beyond manufacturing, there is no more of this replacing process performed. This cannot be performed on packaged parts, thus no refurbishing.

The few $$$ saved is not worth it.

Additionally, there are cases where pirated chips are packaged and sold as much larger and faster packages. They are known to make a smaller part continually overwrite the same area making you think you have a larger card. And they will sell it so that it looks like a legitimate manufacturer of memory cards. Buying so called "refurbished" may get you some of these cards. By the way, Flash Memory manufacturing is difficult and quite expensive to set up a fab. I would seriously doubt that there are manufacturers making the chips that are destined to go into these fraudulent memory cards. There are only a handful of manufacturers in the entire world making Flash Memory. The only source I can think of is that some older, smaller, slower die are obtained in some manner and packaged to look like something they are not.

I wouldn't do it.

Bill.Doub

Your 'BTW' message is the first thing I thought of when I read the original message. Why are you storing all your images on memory cards. If I'm traveling by car or some other means that allows me to have my laptop with me, I transfer filled cards to the PC, store on internal drive and also cloud storage. If no laptop, I transfer to phone or tablet via WiFi (and also cloud storage).

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

"Long term" is not while one is on safari or traveling home, it is when one puts the cards in a drawer for archival saving.

Not sure what you mean by "Why are you storing all your images on memory cards."
I did not infer "storage" (as in long term) from his post. They are unloaded (transferred to a PC) when he gets back from an outing.