Katie; I too share my buddy Chuck Tomarchio's admiration for your enthusiasm and inquisitiveness of a "rookie". Maintain your bright outlook on your new hobby. You'll get a tremendous amount of enjoyment out of it.

As for your question "$100 chips for $10 or less?" Several years ago, before Gaming passed chip destruction regulations, many times when a casino went out of business or went bankrupt.... sheriffs auction sales were held to satisfy some creditors. Everything in the casino was auctioned off, from furniture, glassware, bedding, tv's, etc., incuding boxes of casino chips. I remember old friend Al Moe complaining many years ago about dealers who purchased boxes of chips for $5-$7 (a box of 100) and selling chips for $3-$5 each from these boxes. Made no difference what the denomination was on the chip. A box of $1 chips was sold at auction for the same price as a box of $100 chips. I recall a woman writing to me from Las Vegas at least ten years ago, offering me hundreds of Bud Jones Holiday International metal center chips that she said her son found, while on a bicycle, in a dumpster behind the closed up property. He had taken many of them to school and gave lots of them away to schoolmates to play with. Of course, those days are gone forever, but a lot of the chips are still around with us.