I suspect that there are certain individuals within Hooters that benefit from the secondary market of these chips.

I believe that after seeing the prices these chips went for on Ebay there are going to be some people on the inside who use their authority or contacts to secure a number of these chips solely for resale purposes. So while Hooters itself may not get more than $5 for the chips thats not to say that insiders in the casino are not benefiting from the secondary market.