Well, although my little survey got over 300 hits, only 11 readers responded with actual numbers, so we probably can’t come up with anything very meaningful. But, here’s what it does show:

1) The feeling of us 11 is that over 40% of ALL chips are sold on eBay (and the other auction sites). According to my estimates, then, this gives us a figure of about 370,000 retail chip sales per year. Does that sound like a reasonable number? Interestingly, the percentages here vary wildly, from an estimate of only 10% up to 80%, indicating estimates of total retail sales varying from 1.6 million to 200,000 respectively.

2) The thinking is that over 50% of obsolete chips are sold on eBay (etc.). Variance here is even greater, with estimates ranging from 10% to 90%! How can this be???

3) Roughly ¼ of people’s collections are picked up by themselves at casinos (either from the cage or directly off of the tables.) Here, we are particularly hurt by the dearth of respondents. We really would need a larger sampling of people who live in casino towns vs those who do not. Also, the width (areas collected) and depth (% obsoletes) that people are collecting. This does indicate, though, that current chips are pretty darn popular items to collect.

4) Roughly 1/5 of their collections are purchased through on-line auctions. Interesting that people believe that the average person purchases from on-line auctions at TWICE the rate than they do themselves (me included).

5) Roughly 15% of their collections are purchased directly from dealers. If you remove my 62% from the equation, the remaining 9 people buy only about 9% of their chips directly from dealers! You people need to go to more shows!!!

6) Roughly 43% of their collections are comprised of chips gotten through trades. I suppose this statistic would rely on many different factors. Evidently Steve Bedo, Mike Heron, and I don’t rely on too much trading. The other 8 respondents rely heavily on trading, with an average of 58% of their collections assembled through trades. Big variances here!

So, what have we learned? Well, not a lot, due, again, to the small response. The only significant things that I can see, which we all knew in any event, are these:

1) People’s collecting habits vary to a huge degree

2) People have vastly different concepts regarding the internet auction market as compared to the overall market

Maybe we’ll try this again down the road.

Maybe not!