A new chip was added to the Royal St. Kitts on February 9th. It is a hot stamped scroll mold $5 chip. The guide has had the $1 and the $25 chips for some time. The $25 chip is generally available, but the $1 chip is not and the hotstamp seems to look weak on the ones I have seen. There has never been a hard copy chip guide that covered St. Kitts, but I believe, based upon its absence from the chip guide that it was not previously known, or only 1-3 were previously known. The chip appeared on the guide after an ebay auction. I searched and found the auction, and put in a bid I fully expected to be blown out of the water, while I sadly watched the chip go. Strangely, I won for much less than my maximum bid. So I searched the completed auctions and found that another had sold for the minimum, $3.99, less than the face value. Uh oh!! So, I wrote the seller and found they had only 2 more, which were going up for auction, one of which had a weak stamp on the "$" on both sides (partially missing, actually). So, 3 nicer chips and 1 not as nice. 4 chips known would hardly make the chip common. In fact, it shouldn't make it "uncommon" and probably not "scarce." The next two went for the same or less than my chip. The prices as I remember were approximately $3.99, $15, $15 and just below $10! So, what's up with this??? Why is this not a valuable chip with much higher sales prices?? Anyone clue me in? Has the Caribbean collecting world really shrunk down to 4 or 5 collectors? I have to say I am a little surprised, but glad I got one.

Michael Siskin