Retro STrife wrote:I've never heard of individual pins coming off a cartridge, so no worries there. Again, outside of dirty pins, it's very uncommon for a cart to not work--it's almost always the NES system.... As a result, I stopped buying new connectors and instead buy these refurbished connectors that seem to work just as well and without the death grip:
If I recall, PCBs are like a sandwich of materials, so the copper you see can't come off as its what's under the green soldermask material. The copper traces are just part of the sandwich left exposed. It can get scratched, but you wouldn't see green anymore, but whatever color the underlying substrate board is underneath the copper layer (possibly tan). AV mod kits are usually made right on that substrate stuff.
For the 72 pin connectors, I've heard the same thing about still having some issues. You can get a brand new 72 pin connector quite reasonably, and they do work - but their build quality might not be what the original Nintendo quality is. Buying a refurbished one or even doing the dental pick repair yourself is an option. I really don't know which is better, since it seems to me that repairing the original connector is going to fatigue the pin connectors.