As many of you might know, I wrote a price guide on Illegal chips many years ago. Its been sitting out there for some time now, old and outdated. The last one was published during the heyday of illegal chipping and the prices are embarrassingly off for todays market. There are a number of reasons for this, but the main reason is a decrease in collectors and an increase in supply. The people leaving the hobby, as well as new finds, have flooded the market with illegal chips, and there simply is not enough collectors to soak them all up.

So, what is a chip with total market saturation worth? Some would say nothing. Take a Flamingo Club chip from Newport. Loads of history, but everyone who wants one has one. Are they worthless?

I've been promising to update the price guide for some time, but I simply have no idea what the price of most illegal chips are these days. If you look at auction sales, you are only capturing the LAST sale, and for illegals the difference between the last sale and the NEXT sale are sometimes very different. Plus, once a new find is made, the price gone. I have bought chips for hundreds of dollars because they were "rare" (which they were at the time). Over the years more have been found and now you can't give them away. Take the beautiful Sui Jen chips from Galveston. I found the $1 and $5 chips years ago from an old Maceo family member in very small quantities. They were $300-400 chips because there were only 6-7 of each and all were purchased on the spot. Last year, someone found a few dozen and you can now buy them cheap (most don't even get a bid on ebay anymore).

Herein lies the problem which you Nevada collectors don't have to worry about. There are some areas of illegal collecting where the introduction of even as little as 3 chips can flood the market. I am uncomfortable recommending the price for chips when the only time it seems relevant is when someone has one for sale. That next sale deteriorates the price, making the price guide outdated.

So what to do? The guide takes alot of time and I don't want to spin my wheels on something with is out of date as soon as its done. I've heard that perhaps we should use a rarity of population number instead. Again, this is quickly out of date as more chips are found.

If I had it my way, I would love to put out a catalog of illegals and forget about the prices, but that never seems to make anyone happy. And if people aren't going to use it, then I'm not going to take the time to do it. Its certainly not for my benefit.

I'm curious to hear if there are any opinions. What would you do if you were publishing such a guide?

Thanks, Ed