Thank you for your post Frank, and I do understand why you want to remain 'obscure' by not including your email address.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, club membership in CC & GTCC is around 3000, or slightly less. I would estimate that less than half that number are interested in collecting A.C. chips. The basis of my estimate is that when A.C. casinos were issuing chips regularly ... a new issue of 1000 chips was usually more than enough to satisfy demand. Issues of $5 chips in the quantity of 1000 are generally still available at less than $10 in the collector market.

So when a hoard of this size materializes, most veteran and not so new chip collectors already have the lower denominations (up to $5) and those who want to add the higher denominations to their collections now have an opportunity to do so at a very cheap price. I do have sympathy for those who paid hundreds or a thousand dollars for some of the regular issue $25's and $100's in the past. Who can fault those buyers for becoming very wary when it comes time to consider another purchase of a significant high-ticket price chip from another closed casino when offered? There are not that many "whales" around who pay big money for these chips to begin with. That's why they USED TO BE so valuable. In fact, it is the whales that today's collectors depend upon to purchase their scarce to rare material when they decide to sell their collections in the future. This is why this whole fiasco has been disturbing to some of the old-timers or investors. Many have lost a lot of money on this discovery.... and some of the finders (who are not chip collectors) will have profited handsomely. While some may say that this is good, because it has added some excitement to the hobby and has provided an opportunity to expand ones collection with the addition of these formerly high priced chips ... I think the downside is that folks with significant disposable income for hobby purchases may become gun-shy when it comes to purchasing valuable chips in the future.