From and article by a long time card collector.
It looks like chip grading and slabbing are good for something? Making the graders rich and making the dealers with high end chips in slabs able to obtain high prices for the same chip that would sell for a more resonable price otherwise.

In other words the collectors are the ones who lose, no matter what. That's us!

-=-=-

"I love card grading because it has allowed me to pick

up an awful lot of older ungraded cards at really good

prices."

He nailed it. Because the investing element in the

hobby believes that unless a card is professionally

graded and encased in plastic it is worth substantially

less than the same card sans grading, dealers stuck

with lesser-condition ungraded cards often unload

them at really good prices.

Over the past decade, lifelong hobbyists have watched

in amazement as card grading evolved from a novelty

to a way of life in the card-collecting field. There

probably are a dozen professional grading companies

plying their trade at the moment, and the competition

is intense. At the Fort Washington show there were

two of the larger grading companies, SGC (which,

ironically, has the same initials as the college where

the Philly show originated in 1975) and PSA, the

oldest and best known.

At each installation, the sheep were lined up to plunk

down their cards and their money so that someone

unknown to them would be so kind as to tell them

whether their card was a 7, 8, 9 or 10.

The other thing that amazes me is that now collectors

are busting packs of 2001 cards and trotting off to

have them professionally graded. Cards right out of

the pack, which should be (better be) mint are costing

collectors even more money so that they can be told

the obvious by a third party. Amazing; P.T. Barnum

was clearly right about suckers.