Pygmy date palm possible pests

[Katepalmsphx]

Hello!

I'm new to this forum and I have a question about two new pygmy palm trees.

I live in Arizona. I have several of these palms throughout my backyard.  All of them were planted while still small (bought at hardware stores). 

And today I bought two of really tall multiple  trunked palms, they were 50% off so I grabbed them.  Thinking what a great deal! They looked great and green.

 

However when I got home and started cleaning them up a little, removing dry fronds, I noticed that some trunks looked like they could be having a pest or other issues.

It looked as if the trunk toward the roots have something like black spores. I also noticed a little bit of white spots but it didn't look like a mealy bug and it wasn't a lot of.  So I sprayed the trunks with incesticidal soap just in case. 

Other than that palms look OK with new fronds looking healthy.

For reference the palm tree I planted 1.5 years ago from I small pot I bought at lowes, looks really healthy and fat. But I care about it daily. 

I never bought these palms in the big size so I don't know if they look OK and healthy and just slightly neglected and dried up or not. 

 

Thanks for your help!

[Looking Glass]

Just looks like dried up old boots to me.  Looks like they met up with adverse conditions, then dried out.  They were a little heavy handed on the trim job, but those guys look pretty strong overall, to me.  Those roots look ready to hit the ground.  Once in the ground around here, that one would pump out about 50 new fronds in a year.  

[KDubU]

Looks good to me as well. Nice heathy green fronds and concur what @Looking Glass stated perhaps a bit overzealous with the trimming.