[rickw]

For me, the main point is the quality of design, followed by the uniqueness factor. It's nice to get a little bit of a discount also, but that's not my main concern.

I participated in the second round of the Egyptian chipco group buy. There was a lot of collaboration on the design process and the end product was pretty great. I do think there is a group of chip consumers who are not satisfied with the current commercial offerings. Look at the new James Bond paulsons for example. While the Paulsons are great chips, who did they talk to when they came up with the inlay? My guess is that the current Paulson design project being run by TenPercenter will run circles around the James Bond chips by the time it is done

As to security, the ordering was handled through a chip merchant on the web (holdempokerchips.com) and there were no issues.

While it might be possible to set up a scam, escrows can be used or you could go through a merchant.