... Pete.

In essence, it's a variation of "insider trading". The chips are produced in small quantities so that a privileged few people on the "inside" (usually but not necessarily casino employees) who have access to the chips can make a substantial personal profit on the secondary market.

I personally don't think it's a marketing strategy at all. Unlike the beanie babies, there is no need to "pump up" the market. The casinos pretty much know exactly how many LE's they can sell. Furthermore, creating "short runs" won't promote the kind of "frenzy" buying that you're talking about because the quantities of new issues are always known Thus, there is neither a need for nor any possibility of "getting lucky" by unexepctedly picking up a "short run" (and therefore unusually valuable) chip.

Chip collectors are relatively sophisticated compared to buyers of mass-produced "collectibles" like beanie babies. Even if the marketing strategy you described is what the casinos have in mind, which I doubt, it can't work with chip collectors. We, as a group, are not going to buy out a 1000 chip LE run with the expectation that it will rise in value the same as a 250 chip LE. We know better.

----- jim o\-S