Mark Freitag's been a friend of mine for quite some years now. I've always known him to be completely fair, honest and straighforward, and I would hate to see him condemned on the basis of a single transaction.

I make no judgments about what you've said, and I know nothing about the transaction other than what you've posted here.

It seems to me possible that there was a miscommunication somewhere, or that expectations were different on each side of the deal.

As an aside, I am amazed at the number of collectors these days who demand and expect and insist they will only collect chips which have never seen use. I know a collector who sits down at tables at the convention and examines every chip he's interested in, with a magnifying glass, looking for evidence of use or imperfections of any kind.

I take the opposite view most of the time. To me, a chip is only a pog unless it's been made to be played, not simply sold to collectors. That's one of the reasons I collect very few "limited edition" or "commemorative" chips. And each year at the convention, I make sure that I purchase two extra chips from the cage and make sure I put them in play at a 21 or craps table. Hopefully, I win them back. But if I don't, I know that the casino has produced a truly live chip, and I can honestly say that I know they've been played.

If we insist on never-used chips, we're limiting ourselves largely to chips no more than 5 or 10 years old, or those found in vaults after casinos have closed. While I agree that condition has some bearing on value, I have many casino-used chips in my collection, and will not part with them. In a sense, actual use lends a patina of romance and history to my chips, and I rather like that. If I were not willing to save used chips, there would be many chips and many eras not represented in my collection.

The history, not just the appearance, of collecting chips is what's important to me. Of course, this is not a comment on your transaction, you simply gave me the excuse to say something that's been on my mind for some time.

Michael