While I agree that a should not avoided because of difficultie in enforcement, I believe that difficulty in actually defining the rule is a reason to avoid making the rule to begin with.

>Caveat to the foregoing -- if the three taken together serve to make the item a "slabbed" chip (that is, if the dealer is functioning as a slabbing service himself), then the combined answer is No. We do not have to approach this the way legislators make laws; we know what slabbed chips are. They would be banned; other alternative means of selling chips would not be.

You state that you would allow a seller to grade his own chip, place it in a hard to open container mark with the grade, unless of course that made the chip a slabbed chip.

At this point your definition is no longer clear. While I have understood everyones objection to slabbing chips as relating to the commercialized grading of a chip by a "independent third party" you are now suggesting that seller might be violating the ban by the way his displays his chip regardless of the involvement of a third party.

You can not reasonably place a ban on slabbed chips by saying its like pornography we know it when we see it.

Furthermore your proposed ban is now looking more like it addresses form over substance.

you would permit a seller to submit his chips to a third party commercial grading service, and advise buyers of that and present them with a certificate of the grade. At this point the only thing different from a "slabbed" chip is that it is not encapsulated. And you would allow the seller himself to encapsulate the chip.

Much of Archie's objection to slabbing revolve's around the fact that people can remove slabs chips from slabs and submit them for regrading in order to obtain a better grade. Under your system, the seller could save himself the cost of reslabbing, he can just misrepresent the assigned grade.

So exactly which evil are you trying to prevent with this ban.