Pete; You've just described what happens at most dealer's tables during most chip shows. How many times have you gone through a dealer's 3-ring binder and found a half-dozen examples of the same chip in various circulated grades/conditions ... all priced the same (let's just say just for conversation sake, $15 each ..., your choice?) Somebody who bought one of these chips on Friday for $15 will in all probability have selected a better condition chip than someone who buys one from the same 3-ring binder for $15 on Saturday... who wasn't there to see the "better" chip(s) that were sold the day before at the same price.

How about at another show held a month later ... where the remaining chips are sold for the same $15 each; your choice? What's wrong with that? Nothing! "The early bird gets the worm."

That's exactly what Rene did when he offered his now famous (or infamous) $5 Thunderbird chips last year. They weren't all individually priced or individually graded. One looked through fifty of them at a time. All were priced a reasonable $25 each across the board. Those who looked at the lot early, naturally selected the nicer appearing pieces. Had ICG been involved, there would have been at least ten different grades and ten different prices. I can't make the case against grading-by-points any better than that. Then we add to that scenario by throwing in "slabbing" ..... Get the BIG picture?

Does anyone think that Rene (or those who owned the chips before him) paid a price on each chip's individual grade when they bought the accumulation? Of course not. But there are those who want to SELL to you and me... individualy graded slabbed chips, priced at huge markups for each increase in point spreads. Why can't there be just a "Circulated" grade? If some circulateds are judged better than others... that's fine.... Charge another $5 or $10, but let's not argue about how many arbitrary points it should be scored by a system that nobody can agree upon. But then, I guess that would be too simple a matter to comprehend.

Let's put it another way. Suppose these same two or three chips were being offered for sale at two or three different dealer tables in diferent parts of the room on the same day. Does anyone think that all three dealers would have the same chip priced at the same level? I don't.