What you’re seeing here is known as a “ghost mold.” It’s thought that BCC would press chips more than once in the process of manufacturing, and chips with a ghost mold are pretty strong evidence that they did so. I’ve seen it in both the Protégé line as well as the Grand Cardroom MGK group buy chips. The GCR chips I’ve seen with ghost mold have MGK on top of MGK. The Protégé line, on the other hand, I’ve seen with both Cigar and Sniffer and Courts and Numerals as the ghost mold. There were reports on Chiptalk that baking (or otherwise heating up) BCC chips would sometimes expose a ghost mold that wasn’t otherwise apparent. The phenomenon was most frequently observed with the Protégé line, although I wouldn’t call it common. It’s generally considered more of a manufacturing defect than an error, and would be expected to have a negative impact on the value of the chip. The impact on value is for the most part a personal decision though. In the grand scheme of issues that can be observed in BCC chips, I personally find the ghost mold to be one of the more tolerable. 10 years ago I had a different opinion of ghost mold chips, so take that with a grain of salt. The sun damage on the inlay of that $25 would generally be considered a bigger issue.
Most importantly, congratulations on finding some Protégé chips! They’re one of my personal favorites amongst the lines that BCC produced, and in my opinion they’re better bang for your buck than Paulson chips, especially with today’s pricing. Leaded Paulson chips may be the bee’s knees, but I’ll take a playable set of Protégé chips over a rack of leaded Paulsons any day of the week.