And then again, maybe not. I hate to think what I paid for that chip some years ago!

Like all auctions, this one depended a lot on who happened to see it, who happened to be bidding, the ending time (11:30 pm EDT on a Sunday night), etc.

Individual auctions aren't, in my view, very good determinants of a chip's actual value. Even less of an indication is a single auction, as opposed to a series of auctions for the same chip.

I tend to agree with you that the Whalen brass core scandal has depressed values of all brass core chips, and that's very unfortunate indeed. If you read the Board's report (and I know YOU have, David), there were actually only a handful of chips which were counterfeited, and the vast majority of brass cores are perfectly legitimate.

What's even more disturbing to me are the rumors that Whalen is still repairing, restoring, altering and counterfeiting chips, some of them for well-known collectors and dealers, and not brass cores.

But I digress. A single auction price realized, especially under these circumstances, doesn't seem to me to be necessarily indicative of an entire market.

Michael