The first CIC chips that BudJones made had the recessed lettering filled with black something. I have never heard how they did it as it's always neat and only on the bottom of each letter. It did wear off after some table use and later chips were not made with any color in the letters. Also, some collectors thought they were just dirty and cleaned all the black off .

I collect all black-letter CIC chips, but have only found 6-8 different.