Sorry, I’m not 100% sure what year my set was made. The earliest reference I can find to the 83-chip set on the web appears to be in 2014.

The rare few new sets that have surfaced so far (including mine) were all in absolute mint condition, and a little chalky, so they were probably not used and went straight to collectors. They look beautiful. I think the smaller font (all same size) is a lot cleaner looking than the older large fonts that vary in size. As someone pointed out earlier in this post, these new sample chips are on the SCV mold, vs. the larger font samples which are in the LCV mold.

I’m aware of the drilled color samples carried by chain, though I’m not too fond of drilled/clipped chips in general.