Don,
Thanks, good thought there. I guess I am in too much in hurry to take the time to study the chips.

I took a closer look at the chips, and I used a solvent to take off the gold hot-stamp, and here are my thoughts:

(a) the three rings --the thing that interested me the most-- I am pretty sure are part of the mold of the chip. They are blue (the base color of the chip). They stand out sharply and crisply (neatly) in relief. I am 99% sure they were not "branded" into the chip in the later hot-stamping process. I intend to mail a chip to Jim Blanchard in Maine to get his opinion.

(b) You are right that there is some printing on all the chips in the round gold hot-stamp area. I hadn't noticed that. Thanks. (I can't make out the words, although one word might be "RAINBOW"; there are a zillion "rainbows" in The Gaming Table. ) I don't know which came first, or if they came together . It seems strange to me that anyone would originally order the chips with the lettering printed (hot-stamped) over the three embossed rings (the printing would not show up well over the rings). My guess is that as an afterthought, years after the chips were made, they were hot-stamped yellow and then hot-stamped black print over the yellow. Or that the original chips had the yellow hot-stamped circle, and then years later the printing of the words was done? Or, as you say, the gold ring is a cancellation.

Robert