Well, I took a mere 15 years off of doing any update to the Chip Guide. But then again, not much really change in a couple decades, right???

I have what I'm calling a "beta" version online now as a couple of guys are still reviewing some areas. I thought I might sneak it up there and see if anyone noticed.

As in the past, I think it important to get this information into the hobby as broadly as possible, so, like the previous, this one is FREE!

You can find it here... www.chipster.net

If you look at the guide, you'll see some changes, but none bigger than the fact that there is no values anymore. I know what most are thinking, what good is it without value codes? In my opinion, its just as good because value estimates for illegals IS MEANINGLESS.

If you want to know my reasoning, its in the Introduction section to the guide. The quick and the short of it will be no surprise to those collectors of illegals - the price of selling one chip versus three chips might be the difference between $100 and $10. With so few collectors, saying a chip is worth, say $50, is immediately outdated when the next goes up for sale. I can't tell you how many times I've been contacted from someone who found a box of chips, which were marked $20 in my guide, and thought they had $2000 worth of chips. Just not so.

So, I've abandoned the values and instead went to some other measurements - population estimate and attribution strength. Although subjective, I felt like we needed to start somewhere. I have full explanations of these scales in the Guide.

I'd be interested in comments or corrections. I spent considerable time formatting my database so I can track changes and update periodically (I'm thinking yearly). It can only get better!

Also, and I'm not ready to put out details yet, but this is just the first phase into what I hope will be a MUCH bigger project.