I don't know the entire story but....the Travel Lodge chips were buried under a casino and when they were doing renovations they were dug up. There were a couple guys filling buckets with chips. Without knowing of the find, many people bought these once very, very rare chips. I bought mine off eBay as a buy it now for $45 (all 3) I thought I was getting the deal of the century. I still think they are really cool and don't regret buying them, but you can find them fairly cheap $5-10 each. I drove up to Reno and through Carson City about 2 months later to go chipping through Antique stores and I saw these chips in every store I visited. Sometimes by multiple vendors. You still see them around. I think a few thousand were found.
Like I said...I do not know the complete story...this is my understanding of what happened.