Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:

“ I’m new to buying chips and I spent $1000 on a casino chip and I got swindled!”

A plea for grading as salvation follows. This story has now appeared three times on the board.

Quack!

Quack!!

Quack!!!

One of the things I learned in kindergarten was how to identify a duck. Ducks and pigs. Don’t buy a pig in a poke. That’s how I learned to buy chips in the real world, even $1000 chips.

Might this tale be a concoction? I see some slickster in a strip club in Colorado, Stoly and stoogie at hand, trying to get the milk flowing on another cash cow for the slab industry. On the cell phone, he gathers his ring of stooges, lackeys, and henchmen and they try to approach something resembling a brainstorming session. Would the result be the $1000 chip story?

The latest interation was a little more finely crafted but still seems to be created by OJ’s alibi writer. The scenario presented presumes that everyone who sells $1000 chips are crooks. A new chip buyer will be comfortable as long as he is aware of the condition of the $1000 chip. Comfortable chip buyers are any civilization’s real best hope and only big poopheads would deny anyone the right be comfortable. You are lucky to have new $1000 chip buyers coming on the scene and everyone benefits from $1000 chip buyers. If we protect $1000 chip buyers…well, wouldn’t that be wonderful? Wouldn’t that be comfortable? Same words keep popping out a lot, don’t you think?

Got questions for the $1000 chip storytellers? Just keep in mind that their narrow $1000 chip interest and unprotected newness to chips prevents them from commenting on rarity, attribution, or anything else we quaint chip collector use as a basis for actual chip value. They really aren’t ignorant of their background fields of interest (cards, coins, dealing) and slabbing’s effect on that field, but after all the yaddayaddayadda, blahblahblah, they’ve just refused to answer any questions you may have. Direct questions? Direct deflections. Enough verbiage to cover the map but nothing near an answer.

Arrogance and ignorance are what slabbing has been bringing to the chip hobby so far. I think that’s their only product as well.