As an avid collector and substantial eBay purchaser of chips, I find it rather interesting that more and more sellers attempt to remind their potential bidders that the Campiglia and Wells identification and price guide is 3 years old. This statement is clearly an attempt to encourage people to jump on board and bid the price up as the value of their purchase can only go up in value as the price guide is outdated.

While price escalation on book one and book two appear to be justified, I see the only advantage to book three being the broadening of items meaning new chip categories covered. While there is some justification for price increases in book three, I sincerely doubt a fourth addition would bring any significant upward pricing as a number of sellers/dealers would like us to believe.

For sure, a jump in price of some truly rare and select R-10 chips might be called for, but for the most part, those are chips that came from the Platinum Collection, and predominantly sold to one single buyer. And if you took away that one particular buyer, prices on the rarest of the chips would be higher, but no where IMO where they ended up being sold for. As a matter of fact, if those chips were reoffered for sale now, I’d be willing to guess they wouldn’t even fetch 40 cents on the dollar of the sale price.

In fact, as I see sales continue on eBay, with rare exception, many chips hardly bring a price equal to category condition of the stated values. Furthermore, as the use of eBay by novices continues, (or the world wide garage sale effect as I call it goes on) chips continue to surface that we never thought would show up.

So to make a long story short, IMHO (and in no way do I say any of this to harm James or anyone else producing a price guide) unless book four, or any new publication includes new chips and other categories, does it really make sense to be published? As I view it now, prices for most chips should be priced downward, not upward.

I invite your comments.

Glenn