For those that collect crest and seal (or as Burt calls them: seal and crest) chips, distinguishing a USPC chip from a Burt chip is not always obvious. Chips that were made by USPC were, many times, later reordered from Burt when USPC ceased chip operations in the late 40s.

Below is an example of a Burt (left chip) and a USPC chip.

These chips are distinguishable 3 ways:

• A Burt chip has a linen finish whereas the USPC is smooth. I don't consider this foolproof since wear can turn a linen finish smooth. Also Burt did make smooth surfaced seal & crests. However, USPC only made smooth finish crest & seals.
• Burt used blue or dark colored ink. USPC used maroonish color. I'm not sure if this applies to all BPOEs but if you spot BPOEs from the same lodge with the same chip color and the ink is different shades, the chances are really good that the Burt chip is the one with the darker ink.
• The chip with the smaller inlay (larger rim) is the Burt chip. This is the best clue of all. USPC crest and seals had uniformly large inlays. Burt seal & crests, for the most part, used smaller inlays.

  In the case of the BPOE 674 shown below, all three apply. These 2 chips were made at different times by two different companies.

  This begs the question: should I collect Burt and USPC seal & crest (crest &seal) separately? Answer--- NOT!