Quote Originally Posted by Dennis View Post
Steve, you are a much valued member of the forum, so I hope you won't be offended if I take issue with the Assay office position on this. Ancient institutions can become fosilised and by definition, fossilised means dead.

When this rule was made, laser marks were unknown and to insist on them now is doctrinaire. It does not make sense to have a punch made if you intend never to use it. At some stage this should be debated and updated. After all, why strike a light, when you can switch it on. Dennis.
Hi Dennis, of course I'm not offended! This is the whole point of forums.....where you can have good old discussions!!

However, here is some good news! Although we do insist that you have a sponsor's punch made, we do not charge you (as some other offices do) for the creation of the software to enable you to mark by laser, so if it's a price issue, then it's as long as it's broad!

In addition, we keep a record of all sponsor's marks by striking the punch on a "marking plate". These are large plates of copper or brass that record the mark and we have these going back hundreds of years.These big plates probably wouldn't fit in the laser machines anyway!!

You're quite right that laser marking came along after the act was written, and what I guess really needs to be done is a change in the wording of the act, but until that happens at least you get complimentary laser software creation with us

BTW thanks for the description of fossil - which of course means "preserved remains from the past" which is exactly what we are doing - preserving the remains of this earliest form of consumer protection