How does one even get the connections to buy such parts? In general, it's called "China". Also happens with US companies like Micron - look up what Spectek doe

How does one even get the connections to buy such parts? In general, it's called "China". Also happens with US companies like Micron - look up what Spectek does: https://www.micron.com/content/dam/micron/global/public/spectek/buyers-guide/spectekbuyersguide.pdf https://www.micron.com/content/dam/micron/global/public/spec... (in particular, see the lines about "carcass die".) I think in this case the microSD card had a defective controller or perhaps a bonding defect, so it would not have been usable as such, but the NAND was still good. This was caught post-assembly, and so got recycled into raw NAND. Sandisk gets to profit from it, so I think they're definitely happy about selling these.