purpose to show what raised my ire. The closest comparison I can make from experience is from when I worked in a sound recording studio many decades ago. We were sometimes called upon to cut records on lacquer discs, these were for ice-skating competitions where the skater wanted background music. The discs could only be used a few times before they would become useless from random scratching (from the stylus). The lacquer was a soft material applied to a metal disc (not the type of record that is stamped from a master, as is the case with a record album that you'd buy in a store). It was also highly flammable, but that's another concern.

Seems to me that the inlay of new chips, these days, especially those made by GPI/Paul-son, are also made of some "soft" chemical that perhaps takes some weeks to harden. It is almost gel-like as can be seen in small bubbles and imperfections on the inlays. If my hunch is correct, new chips can be greatly damaged by scratching the hard outer edge of another chip across the inlay, although I don't care to sacrifice one of my beauties to test out this theory. (Unless I test by attempting to scratch an already-damaged chip.)

As for flammability . . . I would have to test that issue outside . . . waaaaay outside.

Until now I thought the scratching comes from drop boxes . . . but again, who stuffs a $2.50 into a drop box?