You may be taking what they are saying out of context. If you find one scarce chip it probably is worth the book value. If you find 500 of them then the price drops to under a buck. One interesting way of figuring chip value is how much one chip is worth times how many are known. That gives you a total value for that type chip. Now if you find a bunch of them, add the number you found to the previous count and divde by that total value. As an example of Nevada chips, if 3 are known and they are worth $10K each the total value is $30K. If you find a box of them now 103 are known and the value of each is closer to $300. I had the opportunity last year to buy a rack of ivory chips for $800. Unfortunately they were very plain and I figured that no way there were 100 collectors willing to pay even my purchase price of $8 each so I passed on the whole deal.