It usually isn't the collector/dealers who bring out boxes & don't tell the whole story. We have reputations to live by. And a board to report us!
It is the greedy people who hold back to make more money off the next guy he can rip off. As in the case of Horseshoe chips. The weird thing about those is that I never got a call from any of those guys who were selling the chips from all over the country. He I am glad I never got called! I got into a few of the rare building pictures way before they came out in hoards & a year later I made good with a customer to the tune of near $5,000! Two other friends we made different deals to make it up. SO who go burned on this one? Myself while acting as a dealer. The others were collectors & it is to some extent my obligation to know & trust my sources. Believe me no one could of guessed there were that many Horseshoe chips. Now we hear about pallets of Sands & as Jim P. mentioned some quickly turn away from all Sands. Is this the right thing to do? That of course is up to the individual buyer if he feels he can afford to take a chance. A chance is taken both ways that if more come out his chip will go down, or not go up in value for a long time. If we are serious collectors we don't really need to worry about this, as in collecting anything you can't expect everything to go up in value. Or do you get the chip to fill in your collection & be thrilled you had the opportunity to buy it. Say a year or two goes by & no Sands show up. You now have a nice collection that others would love to have & wished they had bought. They were cautious & didn't as the rumors scared them from adding to their collection. I would say your chips will be worth quite a substantial amount more & the risk was worth taking. Any chip you buy can become more common we all know this. Some such as Sands are so popular & have such a high demand that the instant any come out there are always far more collectors wanting to buy them. It will always be this way for the world famous Vegas casinos.