Ken,

Slabbing is the process of commercially grading and encapsulating an item. It is common with coins and baseball cards and one company is now doing it with casino chips.

The theory behind slabbing is that a supposedly independent third party grader will assign a grade and then seal the item with the grade so that the grade can not be altered.

The reason that this developed and thrives with coin collectors is that there is a very elaborate coin grading system which most novice collectors can't master on their own.

The reason that this is inappropriate for chips is that chips do not have an elaborate grading system, in fact there is no single commonly accepted grading standard for chips. Most of us use a four or five category system based on a obvious characteristics of the chip.

The one company that is currently slabbing chips refuses to divulge its grading standard, what this means is that they will not tell you how they assign grades other than to claim that "independent" experts grade them and a higher number is a better grade.

Many of us believe that slabbing will lead to artificial price inflation.

for more information check out www.slabfree.com