I received a few responses to my personal e-mail address. I've learned alot from them, but I guess my real question is, If I buy a current chip now... when is it worth 1/10th the value I paid for it? (Aside from Atlantic City) If I buy now, I loose a lot of my hard-earned money. If I wait until it becomes obsolete to buy, I loose even more of my hard-earned money... BUT, if I wait until it's been obsolete for about 10 years, the collectibles market will have settled and I'll be able to buy a chip at a collectors price instead of an investors price.

Thanks for everyone's input. It's a tough decision to make when there's such a variety of items to collect. I researched a lot of options (LV-my first wedding , AC-my wives favorite gambling stop, Hard Rock, Niagra Falls-our 1st childs annual vacation spot on her birthday and Indiana-hey, the casino's are just down the road!) but my final decision, and one I look forward to, is to pursue the older chips.

Here are the definitions from the glossary:

CURRENT A casino collectible that is still in use.

OBSOLETE In general, when applied to casino collectibles, an item that is no longer in use or available from the original source. Usually the collectible is from a closed casino or from a casino that has stopped using the item because it has been replaced.

Here are selections from e-mails I've received:

First, there has to be a distinction between obsolete and retired. My general definition of obsolete is that the chip can no longer be purchased from the cage or from the tables. But that if I had one, I could play it on the tables. By definition an LE (limited edition) chip will never be obsolete as it was never intended to be played on the table (even though there are some that were). Everyone has a slightly different definition.

Retired means that the casino will no longer redeem the chip for face value. This is handled slightly different for each gaming jurisdiction but usually has a period under which the casino advertises (either in the newspaper or at the casino) that a particular chip will no longer be cashable. This is done to take the inventory of chips "off the books" so that the casino does not have to have the cash reserves to cover the chips.

An exception to this is Atlantic City. By state gaming law (as regulated by the Casino Control Commission) a chip will always be redeemable at face value from the casino. In the case where the casino is closed the chip can be redeemed at the Casino Control Commission office. So when the casino closes, they have the leave enough money in escrow to cover any outstanding chips in case someone tries to cash them. In the case where the casino is taken over by someone, then the chip is cashable at that casino.

For example, Tropicana changed its name to TropWorld and back to Tropicana. So I can play and redeem TropWorld chips at Tropicana. Same with Boardwalk Regency and Caesars. But a casino like Playboy that no longer exists (even the building was torn down) can be redeemed at the CCC. So potentially if I have a $2.50 Playboy AC chip (which I do). I could redeem it for $2.50 or keep it/sell it on Ebay.

So back to your question. Why are some Obsolete chips really expensive while others are not? Collectability I guess. An example is the $100 Arodie from Binions. They are not redeemable at the casino (retired) and they were very collectible UNTIL a whole lot of them were found and released to the collectors. The price went down. I bought mine for about $15.