3rd Party companies provide a variety of services, including, but not limited to grading. These include authentication and atribution. Grading is an art, not a science. However, I do believe that some of the (better) services DO warrent the authentication portion of there services.

While a large number of people who utilize these serices for US coins are concerned with the final grade of there item, I would think that many chip collectors might be more interested in the matter of if the chip has been repaired or altered.

In the past, the better 3rd party companies HAVE paid large maounts of money for coins that they have encapsulated that turned out to be NOT genuie.

So, if you are going to compare apples to apples, fine.

But apples and organes are two different things!

JOhn