Thom,

I'd like to see the spreadsheet.

Of course the final system, if one is adopted does not need to be descriptive. What is needed is a methodology of assigning numbers so that as new chips come out or are discovered, we know what number to assign.

As far as lengthy numbers go, they can be reduced. Greg had made a post about the lengthy numbers not being likely to be used by authors or collectors and I responded, but do to some glitch both posts are gone, unless you search for them.

here was my response pointing out that numbers can be represented in shorter format.

>>Actually, one way to avoid that is to use alphabetic characters in addition to numerals. In that way each position in the code can have up to 36 possible values. Remember that the decimal (base 10) number 1000 converted into binary (base 2) looks like 1111101000 but converted into hexidecimal (base 16) it is represented as 3E8 and in a base 36 system it would be RS.

I'm not suggesting that we use a base 36 system, just that there are ways to shrink down the length of numbers