I've been looking into this, too, and have found some useful parts on amazon, which could be soldered pin-by-pin:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0191EEW04
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CF569VQ
Other boards like this one don't seem to have the correct pins:
http://a.co/5RFdqLu
(If you know how to use them, let us know)
The tall pins can be removed, and the components on the back of the sparkfun are only for voltage level translation, but I wouldn't remove that unless if I was willing to find where and how to patch missing traces created from missing components.
I'm sure Helder's already thought of it, but the SD card would be a nice addition to his boards, like this:
Adafruit makes a similar board, but it would be too long, as you can see the sparkfun board only has a few centimeters to space:
Here's a quick guide on how to remove the tall pins:
As you can see in these pics, they fit great, but due to how the SD card is flush with the PCB, you would have to cut one jankey hole into the tin with the PCB exposed.