You raise points that have no exact answers. Only possible explanations, theories, and conjecture. I will make an attempt to respond to some of your questions and statements.

First obvious question;
Dealer A has a chip in binder that he sells for $150 on the bourse floor. Same identical chip sells on eBay for $100. What price do I prefer listed in a guide? My answer is neither. I don’t prefer any specific price. What I’d rather see is a bid and ask based on numerous past sales assuming they could be documented. But that’s not going to happen.

Now some comments;
I agree supply and demand controls all aspects of buying and selling. The only thing that screws that up, irrational emotional behavior which enters into play when certain people have the wherewithal to pay anything or any amount for something they must have.

When you made the comparison of a $5000 chip to Doug’s $5 Bucket of Blood chips, I think you’re comparing apples to oranges. Maybe the hobby has 25 people that would spend $5000 for a single chip, but clearly an exponential number that will spend $100 for a chip.

And as Doug ran out of Bucket of Blood chips, and when Dale Stuart runs out of Trop chips, and when I run out of Dunes Brown and Pink 1st issue roulettes, the market did/will move up somewhat and stabilize. On the other hand, if suddenly 50 Sands $5 2nd issue arodies came on the market; do you think they would now bring $33,000 each? I don’t think you’d have your 25 high end buyers paying $5000 each.

To expand on your statement, I believe the hobby is static. And not only is the hobby IMO static, but because of that and that one individual that caused prices to spike, you are seeing a retraction in the hobby.

No question the breakup of Bud Myers collection and that of the Platinum collection offered certain individuals to add certain chips to there individual collections, but it did nothing in the scheme of things for the hobby itself. In fact, all that happened was the movement of those chips from one binder or one safe deposit box to another. However, what it did cause as I stated previously, was make a number of dealers with somewhat related chips believe their inventories were worth more on the bourse floor.

I agree that guides have ratings and prices that make no sense at all. I can cite an R-5 chip that I have been looking for, for years and only know of two.

As for the $5 River Queen, I wish I was one of the later victims that paid $500. I would feel that was a bargain compared to what I got stuck for.