There was a recent discovery of a rack of high denomination Bahamas Playboy chips that caused considerable discussion on the ChipBoard. There were some in our hobby that it appears tried to take advantage of the seller (who is not a collector) by offering way too little for the chips. The seller was somewhat confused about how to sell the chips and sought advice. From what I have seen the advise was all over the board from low ball to high ball. I thought that I would explain how I think that these chips, and others like it, should be priced.

The chip collecting community is relatively very small. So prices are greatly affected by the number of collectors and the number of available chips. There is a lack of authoritative price guides for casino chips from many of the locations that are collected. There are avid collectors are willing to pay almost any price for a chip they need for their specific collections down to casual collectors who will buy any chip that happens to appeal to them only when they are available at bargain basement prices. In order to determine a price for a newly discovered chip, you have to know: How many are available? How many collectors would be interested in the chip? and What prices they are willing to pay? That is how I determined my estimated prices for the Bahamas Playboy chips.

And you can disagree with me, but I am using the model that Charlie Rodgers established when he sold the previously unknown Caesar's Palace $1 1st issue chips. Charlie acquired almost of full box of the chips. He figured out what each chip would be worth in light of the quantity found. And sold them all at that fixed price. My hat's off to Charlie. I mean he could have done what other dealers have done, which is sell the first few to die hard collectors for what they thought were unique or extremely rare chips at exorbitant prices and then let the rest out slowly with the selling prices steadily decreasing. But Charlie took the high road, which is why he is in the Hall of Fame and some other chip dealers aren't.

My advice to the seller of the Playboy chips was that I thought they were worth $50 to $100 each if sold individually now based on the quantities he found and in light of other factors, such as the possibility of more Playboy Bahamas chips being around, the recent hoard of Atlantic City Playboy chips and the poor economy. If the seller wanted to sell the entire lot to a dealer, he should expect no more than half of that.

Here is why it is best to be open and honest when these hoards are discovered. This is a pricing exercise. Let's say that all 100 chips found were $500 Bahamas Playboy chips, I know that there are 4 different types, but this is just an example.

If only one was sold, it might bring $1,000.
If only two were sold, they might bring $800 each, total to seller is $1,600.
If only ten were sold, they might bring $300 each, total to seller is $3,000.
If only twenty were sold, they might bring $200 each, total to seller is $4,000.
If fifty were sold, they might bring $100 each, total to seller is $5,000.
If all 100 chips were sold, they might bring $60 each, total to sell is $6,000.

In each case, the individual chip price gets lower and lower while the quantity of chips sold increases, but the seller's income also increases. That is why the best policy is to be open and honest. At $60 each, all collectors who wanted one of the chips, got one at a reasonably price and the seller winds up making the most money. Open and honest.