Mark

Your post was well thought out and very informative, you make some good points and I thank you for taking the time to post.

Let me qualify my position, I am new to chip collecting and do not have vast knowledge of the field.

I have a few questions that went unanswered in your post. Please clarify a few points for me.

1) Do the people that certify chips have any credentials of being authorities in the field?
2) What are the probabilities of repeatability in grading? Simply put, if I sent you the same chip on ten occasions what are the chances of it being graded the same each time?
3) Is the grading process such that a layperson could understand and (with some degree of accuracy) grade a chip the same as your graders? Or is this a complex system that takes a Philadelphia lawyer (or one of your graders) to interpret.
4) Does the grading system create an artificial market?
5) You mention in your post that an investor will likely offer chips to you for sale at some point in the future. Do you have an open offer to buy chips have graded?
6) If I were to send 3 chips all closely alike except the grade, each being one point from the next could your graders tell them apart?
7) Do you insure or guarantee your ratings?

You mention in your post that you have sold over $77 million in coins and bullion; does this imply that you are more credible? Sorry I missed your point in mentioning that. There was a scam artist in Dallas that did $4 million in only six weeks, his credibility looked great too. He had a large customer base as well, so I fail to see the correlation there.

Your response to slabbing causing the chip cost to rise, you pointed the finger at hoarding and other problems we have to deal with then quickly sidestepped the issue. Will this cause chip cost to rise over time, due to an artificial market and added costs or not?

As far as your analogy of the Collector, Collector/Investor, Investor, I think your view may be skewed. But, I am not the expert here.

You describe the Investor as someone who calls you up and wants $50,000 worth of stuff and salts it away for 10 years ‘hoping’ for a strong profit. He likes the way you have treated his friends and associates or Mother or Father and therefore buys from you based on your reputation not your product. First) This Investor has quite a disposable income where he can toss $50K and just ‘hope’ for a strong profit on a box of ‘stuff’. Second) If he “buys from you based on your reputation and not your product” brought the words FIRESTONE TIRES to my mind. The tires may have killed everyone in the family, but at least they did get good service from the dealer! Can’t fight logic like that! (it also made me think of the scam artist in Dallas again too). Not strong selling point..

The veggie burger with meat in it lost me completely. You were out of the strike zone on that one. Same thing with the mobsters in the movie theater and the politician it sounded good, but is meaningless on the slab issue.

I just quit smoking; I no longer buy tobacco products or do business with tobacco companies. That does not mean I would leave those people to die in the desert either. For you to imply that people not wishing to slab chips would leave others in the desert to die seems to say something about your mental reasoning here.

Seeing your auctions fro the Sacagewean Dollar coin where ONE point difference makes the starting bid ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS MORE is NOT what I want to see in my hobby. THIS SPEAKS VOLUMES!!!!!!!

Have you ever lived in DALLAS??

Please straighten me out here. I was born on Tuesday, but it wasn’t LAST Tuesday!

Sincerely,
Just off the turnip truck.