I don't know if it will stand up in the eyes of the USPS, FedEX or UPS but this brings up a good point. One that I have made practice of for similar but different reasons. I have done this to keep record, for insurance reasons, of what my collection is worth.

When you win an auction, print out a hard copy of the actual auction page from eBay and save it on your hard drive in a dedicated folder for such items.

Don't move the files around as by doing so you can break links in the documents. If anyone has an idea on how or what format to save such pages so that they will be preserved better, I would be interested to know. My problem is that I have saved them as .htm files and when I have moved them around, while doing routine house cleaning of my drive, or backed them up they loose all their formatting or graphics etc. I have noticed that when you save a web page it saves as a folder full of all the graphics etc. and a document. When you open the document it gets all the items like logos, pictures etc. from the file folder that was saved. My understanding is that if you move the items than the file folder full of items disconnects from the document and messes everthing up. I think, but am not sure that if you put them in a folder and move or back up the whole folder at once, than would these items stay intact?

By saving copies of your auction pages, that way if you have a dispute with the post office over the cost of an item and/or, it's value, you can take in printouts of the auction(s) and establish the value. It might also be valuable to save and print out, from time to time, other COMPLETED auctions for similar chips to ones that you won or have in your collection. I do this also in order to keep track and document the ongoing value of my collection, in case something ever happens to it. Make sure that you keep such data on a backup disk in a safe place. Maybe have multiple copies in multiple places so that all your records can't get trashed along with your collection, if, God Forbid, something were to happen. By keeping multiple auctions you would have a bunch of evidence to better substantiate a value. If 4 or 5 auctions ended with similar prices than they can't say that you just paid too much. At least you would have the basis to say, OK here is the average of all recent auction prices.

As for my participation in the poll, I have been buying chips on eBay and from NISs for about 3 or 4 years. I have, probably, bought about 75 or so chips and have never had one get lost. KNOCK ON WOOD. I have had a couple where they were delayed, One where the seller found the package and profusely apologized that he forgot to send it and the third was on 9-10-01 when a seller sen't me a Tyson Holyfield II chip from LA to Chicago. I probably don't need to say how long that took to get to me. I started to think that the USPS had hired some old prospectors with Mules to bring things accross country. With total understanding and all the chip did arrive in about 2 weeks.

Here is a pole question. Has anyone had any problems with chips being damaged from scanning or irradiation or other techniques being used to disinfect mail?