I was looking for some specific chip pictures in an orange thread and came upon a post by @ChipDonkey (@Rainman Trail)
This is a topic that none of us can come to consensus on. I also wonder if other hobbies have the contingent of "flipper shaming flaming pitchfork" folks trying to control the market.
I also stumble back to the question of "Can one mans buying habits affect a whole hobby"?
This discussion comes up in many conversations with friends when discussing the hobby and the prices chips are bringing. A chip is hot today at $15 and $3 tomorrow. Someone ridiculously pays $12,000 for a single chip that there is supposedly 10 known today and $3000 for it a couple years later! Just one example for instance, there is known to be 1000's of Nevada Lodge $25 (Blurple) chips made and they are going at $200 - $250! PER CHIP! Don't even get me going on the IAGB chips that go upwards of $10 - $20 a chip IN BULK after they were made for a buck and a half yesterday!
I've been at this for some years now and cannot make heads or tales of what controls and affects the pricing in our hobby. There is also 2 dynamics at work in our hobby, Sets collectors and singles collectors. While a singles collector will certainly pay more for a single chip and insist that its value is accurate because the chip rack says its a "Z3" (incidentally the chip rack comes out every 2 years, hardly current ever) The guy with 4 racks of these chips is known and the price seems unaffected yet another guy obtains a rack (100) of "Z" rated chips with a known low manufacture quantity and with a few well placed comments on the forums (maybe a poke with a flaming pitchfork) the value on that chip plummets. SO CONFUSING.
When the discussions happen we always land on the fact that a chip is worth what a buyer will pay for it. I'm not so sure I agree with that statement either but I'm not convinced that there is a rock solid value on any chip when the statement "There's a box around every comer" is spoken! Or when a dealer says "Well these go for $75 a chip so the 3 racks are $7500 each"!
Another thing that I see frequently affect the "market" is the old statement of "I know you bought those chips for $1 a piece so there is NO WAY Ill pay you $20 a piece even though the market realizes $20 a chip every day on eBay and even higher on other platforms. What's with this dynamic?? What I do know arises from this last one is why everyone is seemingly so secretive about their deals and what they have, although some post their finds and collections very openly.
It would appear that the "Sets" and "Singles" communities, even though in the same hobby, have a different theory on the price of clay. I might even say a radically different view while even sub sets within the 2 groups have even different ideas on pricing. I have a somewhat spanning collection of sets and a small collection of singles, my singles aren't chosen by value or scarcity, each chip has a meaning to me, some by the fact that it was a close connection in the specific casino, some a reminder of a "hoard strike", and yes even a few that I collect because I really just love the look of the chip. In my singles collecting though, I would NEVER buy a chip with no meaning because it was rare or sought after, but that's just one mans style, there are so many styles and none are right or wrong just individual. My personal opinion that someone paying $30 or $40K for a single chip, one that isn't even visually appealing (again, everyone's view is different) is REDONCULOUS and, to me, even irresponsible but I guess that the high end chip market is lucky an actual brick and mortar "Museum" of gaming artifacts and history run by trusted responsible folks never surfaced. I guess a museum dedicated to gaming artifacts isn't a sustainable thing. ( That's a whole other discussion for a different day)!
It seems the majority of our hobby is mostly about buying and profiting on chips than keeping them in a collection to admire. Sets get put on shelves in mint condition, never used, and sold years later in the same mint condition. Singles go into binders on a shelf un-perused for years until a chip gets discussed or shown and out it comes for sale. At shows I see a large contingent of sales between dealers, far more than from dealers to collectors. It would seem that a lot of dealers are selling to the very few "Whales", for lack of a better term, in hopes of 5 figure profits. This always makes me ask, how many folks in our hobby buy chips in the 5 figure range?
I hope this thread garners some good discussion. I have many more observations about the hobby in general and will post them here in hopes of gaining more incite into our clay disk obsession, I mean "Hobby", but for now its off to work! Stay tuned and please chime in!
This is a topic that none of us can come to consensus on. I also wonder if other hobbies have the contingent of "flipper shaming flaming pitchfork" folks trying to control the market.
I also stumble back to the question of "Can one mans buying habits affect a whole hobby"?
This discussion comes up in many conversations with friends when discussing the hobby and the prices chips are bringing. A chip is hot today at $15 and $3 tomorrow. Someone ridiculously pays $12,000 for a single chip that there is supposedly 10 known today and $3000 for it a couple years later! Just one example for instance, there is known to be 1000's of Nevada Lodge $25 (Blurple) chips made and they are going at $200 - $250! PER CHIP! Don't even get me going on the IAGB chips that go upwards of $10 - $20 a chip IN BULK after they were made for a buck and a half yesterday!
I've been at this for some years now and cannot make heads or tales of what controls and affects the pricing in our hobby. There is also 2 dynamics at work in our hobby, Sets collectors and singles collectors. While a singles collector will certainly pay more for a single chip and insist that its value is accurate because the chip rack says its a "Z3" (incidentally the chip rack comes out every 2 years, hardly current ever) The guy with 4 racks of these chips is known and the price seems unaffected yet another guy obtains a rack (100) of "Z" rated chips with a known low manufacture quantity and with a few well placed comments on the forums (maybe a poke with a flaming pitchfork) the value on that chip plummets. SO CONFUSING.
When the discussions happen we always land on the fact that a chip is worth what a buyer will pay for it. I'm not so sure I agree with that statement either but I'm not convinced that there is a rock solid value on any chip when the statement "There's a box around every comer" is spoken! Or when a dealer says "Well these go for $75 a chip so the 3 racks are $7500 each"!
Another thing that I see frequently affect the "market" is the old statement of "I know you bought those chips for $1 a piece so there is NO WAY Ill pay you $20 a piece even though the market realizes $20 a chip every day on eBay and even higher on other platforms. What's with this dynamic?? What I do know arises from this last one is why everyone is seemingly so secretive about their deals and what they have, although some post their finds and collections very openly.
It would appear that the "Sets" and "Singles" communities, even though in the same hobby, have a different theory on the price of clay. I might even say a radically different view while even sub sets within the 2 groups have even different ideas on pricing. I have a somewhat spanning collection of sets and a small collection of singles, my singles aren't chosen by value or scarcity, each chip has a meaning to me, some by the fact that it was a close connection in the specific casino, some a reminder of a "hoard strike", and yes even a few that I collect because I really just love the look of the chip. In my singles collecting though, I would NEVER buy a chip with no meaning because it was rare or sought after, but that's just one mans style, there are so many styles and none are right or wrong just individual. My personal opinion that someone paying $30 or $40K for a single chip, one that isn't even visually appealing (again, everyone's view is different) is REDONCULOUS and, to me, even irresponsible but I guess that the high end chip market is lucky an actual brick and mortar "Museum" of gaming artifacts and history run by trusted responsible folks never surfaced. I guess a museum dedicated to gaming artifacts isn't a sustainable thing. ( That's a whole other discussion for a different day)!
It seems the majority of our hobby is mostly about buying and profiting on chips than keeping them in a collection to admire. Sets get put on shelves in mint condition, never used, and sold years later in the same mint condition. Singles go into binders on a shelf un-perused for years until a chip gets discussed or shown and out it comes for sale. At shows I see a large contingent of sales between dealers, far more than from dealers to collectors. It would seem that a lot of dealers are selling to the very few "Whales", for lack of a better term, in hopes of 5 figure profits. This always makes me ask, how many folks in our hobby buy chips in the 5 figure range?
I hope this thread garners some good discussion. I have many more observations about the hobby in general and will post them here in hopes of gaining more incite into our clay disk obsession, I mean "Hobby", but for now its off to work! Stay tuned and please chime in!
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). I personally enjoyed calling someone out who had stupid high price but realistically it's wrong. Let the buyer beware and move along if it's priced insane. I currently have a rack of mint Diamond Jacks $1's for sale on PCF for $325 shipped. I bought them for $179 from The Chip Room. I know they're scarce and Jim sold off his leftover mint $5's & $25's for $1 each so there are a bunch of guys out there needing $1's and I priced them accordingly. So far nobody has even questioned my price. They also still haven't sold lol. But if someone did call out the original purchase price I'd deal with it in my own way and not call in the gestapo. There are guys trying to sell those $5's & $25's they got for $100 for double at $200. If the demand is there they'll sell regardless of any thread crapping.
