Mark, you hit the nail on the head.

A few bad apples ruin the entire barrel. I've always loved brass core chips, and have quite a few. Now they're all tainted, even though there are relatively few remanufactured/repaired/altered/fake versions out there, and those are mostly in colors that never existed in casinos.

Still, there are those who will want to claim that there are no legitimate brass cores. They're wrong, but this whole fiasco has certainly made collectors much more cautious. Given the circumstances, rightfully so.

Same thing happened with the Borland fakes and the Osborne remanufactures. Unless you know what you're doing, it's hard to tell the real ones from the fake Borlands. And most of the Osbornes aren't fakes at all!

Michael