... it seems to me, Arch, are the three primary factors in determining the market value of any collectible (putting aside minor personality quirks which might effect how much a particular collector might pay for a particular chip!).

Ignoring, for purposes of this discussion, condition, it seems to me that "rarity" refers only to the "supply" characteristic of value. If there is only one of a chip, the supply is fixed, regardless of whether there is one potential buyer or 100. Same thing if there are 100 chips. The supply is fixed, regardless of whether there are 100 potential buyers or 10,000.

No question that you are correct in stating that the demand (that is, the number of potential buyers of a particular chip issue) is going to effect both the number of chips sold and the price at which they will be sold, though I don't think that the denomination of the chip necessarily has any bearing on this. (The difference between a $5 and a $100 chip is an extreme example; is there much difference in the demand between a $2.50 and a $5 chip??)

If a casino produces 10 chips with a face value of $10,000 each, are they rare? By any reasonable standard, yes. Is anyone going to collect them? Probably not. That there are NO potential buyers does not make these chips any less rare. It just means no one is going to buy them even though they ARE rare.

I wouldn't call the "porn chips" rare just because there was an abnormal demand and the price went out of sight so quickly. They MAY be rare, depending on how many actually survived (which, as I understand things, no one knows for sure). They certainly appear to be in high demand (and highly desirable; wish I had a set myself <g>). However, if the same number of chips in $100 denominations was available, their "rarity" would be the same as the $5 chips. The demand might be significantly less (and therefore the relative price discrepancy might be less; that is, they might not sell for 10-15 times their face value).

My point is probably much easier to see if you think in terms of the high value obsolete chips, ones where the collector values far exceed the the face values -- for such chips there is frequently little or no correlation between face value and collector value. The truly rare ones, regardless of denomination, are generally worth more.

I would like to see the chip collecting term "rare" used less subjectively, which is why I like the rarity scale devised by Jim & Steve. We are still going to have to evaluate for ourselves whether our personal "demand" justifies paying the price which is being asked, but at least we'll have some idea of how many of the things are known to exist.

Hope that's clear, Archie. ----- jim o\-S