Is the LIGHTER blue colored Sands chip on the left a new color variation?

Over the years, I have had 30 or 40 of the Sands chip. Most had worn hot stamps, and they were always silver hot stamps. They were always DARK blue in color. (as shown by the chip on the right).

At the convention, I found the chip on the left. It had a full GOLD colored hot stamp, square edges (never seen this before on this chip), but the weird thing was the LIGHTER blue color. Is the chip just faded in color? or is it a color variation?

Comments, enlightenments would be appreciated.

Joe