[janekm]

That is unknown providence too. If you want to be sure of getting an original chip, you need to buy it from one of the official distributors as recommended by the IC vendor, or one of the well-known distributors (Digikey, Mouser, Farnell, ...). The well-know distributors can have high shipping to some parts of the world, hence the appeal of ebay in some cases.

[joezydeco]

Funny story, I had a high % of a certain part that was causing rejects on the line. We traced the lot numbers with the manufacturer's help and...they had no information on the lot.

Now we had a big problem. Was counterfeit product getting into the mix? Our distributor claimed they were clean, the manufacturer claimed they were clean too.

Turns out that the manufacturer had temporarily moved production to a different plant during the Fukushima tsunami. There was some...confusion...during the move.

[chiph]

Dad worked for a firm that made tantalum capacitors, and one day the truck carrying the raw metal was hit by a train on the way to their plant.

Tantalum prices being the way they were, they had the workers out there along the tracks picking up the chunks of metal from the weeds, collecting the pieces in plastic bins.

It was sent back to the smelter to be reprocessed, but the temporary shortage caused real problems with their delivery schedules.

[IneffablePigeon]

You have to be having a bad day as a truck driver to be hit by a train.