"I'm trying to get a handle on exactly what a Borland is."

Short version.

Bill Borland was a pioneer in the chip collecting hobby. His Blue Book was a trail blazer. He wrote the 1st book with chip prices. His store was a gathering place for chip collectors.

He bought the Nevada and Dice Card molds from The Bud Jones Company in about 1991.

He used the molds to make reproductions of many old chips and sold them into the hobby. Some buyers knew they were fakes and some did not. Some resold them as real. European collectors took a bad beating on the counterfits.

Today, some are still selling Borlands as real.

Borland did a lot of good for the hobby in the early days. His counterfits far over shadows that good, IMO.

"Does Borland produce any legitimate cheques?"

That is the excuse many sellers use when legitimizing false sales.
BUT, yes he did do a few real chips. I have been able to verify 1 real chip he hade. Today the one chip is still listed in TCR as a Borland fake. I feel it is best to leave it as is. Changing it, would only give sellers more fuel to sell counterfits.

I spent a lot of time at BJ trying to ID all the Borland chips. Most are Medal aligned, that should be your 1st clue, but does not 100% apply. He must have spent hours medal aligning all those chips.

BTW, he paid some of his hookers with counterfit $100 DI chips. He took some heat over those.