There are several reasons, as follows:

1. I do not have deep pockets. Of the 600 chips he had, I could have added 90% of them to the holes in my collection. Therefore, we would never come to a single price for everything. I. E., one that I could afford, let alone one that he could accept.

2. I do not believe that he had any "unique" pieces. Therefore, everything he had was likely available to me at the Convention, or at some of the smaller shows, for the same negotiating and with a likely additional 10% off (or discount for multiple purchases). Not to mention spending my money within our family.

3. The TCR is a but guide when it comes to values, and your mileage may vary! What I mean by this is that although the TCR may indicate a chip to be worth x value, it may not be worth x value to me, but it may be worth it to me at 50% of x value. I don't know about others, but I don't start my negotiating at the low TCR value. And I pay attention to 'condition'! A low TCR value is not the threshold value for a worn chip. As an example: The current Excalibur $1 chip is valued as $3 - #5 in the TCR. The one that was available in this collection was heavily worn. In fact, it would not stand on edge unless it was in a rack with 19 other new chips! Needless to say, the chip was worthless, other than for the $1 exchange rate you could get for it at the Excalibur Casino, but you had better be going there anyway, because if you made a special trip to cash it in, then you would have lost money. Anyway, my point is, the chip was TCR marked at $5, but that was unrealistic, just as the Bugsy's Hideaway $1000 at $40 was unrealistic.

4. I do not have the values of all chips committed to memory, and I would have needed a current TCR to validate that his pricing was within current ranges. My concern being that recent finds may have changed rarity. But even then, hoards may have turned up in the months since TCR 8 went to press. Look at the obsolete Royal Casino chips that went from an F to a C just last week.

5. The sum total of material being offered needed greater examination to determine 'my' value, than what I was afforded across a poorly lite dinner table at a restaurant. (This is one of the great benefits of a show. I can look at each piece I am interested in, at my leisure.)

Those are but a few of my reasons, at the time.

Jim Follis