I have not seen this discussed on the chip board, so I could easily be wrong (and, as is generally true when I post possible variations on this board, I really don't have too much invested whether it is or is not a variation). I brought it up at the Northeast Chipper Gathering and we looked at some of Jim Gagnon's chips, not the chips in the scan below. We all believed there were differences in some of his chips. Anyway, I found that all of the chips my brother-in-law brought back looked the same, but one older dirtier chip did not. At first, I thought the brown in the tree looked different (in person, it really does). Looking at the scan, I noticed what appears to be much more bold lettering in the older, dirtier chip. Looking at both the chips and the scans, the lines in the parts of the trees are MUCH more distinct in the chip with the bolder writing (just the opposite of what you would expect - bolder writing, thinner tree lines). In the chips at Jim's house, we thought we saw a variation in the thickness of the denomination, I believe. Here is my comparison scan:

Anyone noticed this before? Is is a true variation? What do you think? Is there a third variation with a thinner denomination?

Michael Siskin