Please do not leave the board thinking you were attacked. The advice you were given comes from long time collectors, and a good number of them have done a lot of research and written books and articles about many things chip related. It can be tough to hear that something you bought dropped in price quite a bit over the last few years, and probably more troubling depending on what your friend spent on them.

Personally, I hardly ever buy a chip right away and research the prices in many different sources (especially ebay) before I buy them. I bought the $1, $5 and 25 chips earlier this year and spend roughly the $100 everyone else is quoting as well. The guy I bought them from had over 100 of each chip and was selling them as singles or in groups with a large number of them set as 'make an offer'. You may have success on a bidding site, but most of the people here know what they can buy that set for and will not be willing to pay above market price for them.

Also, please keep in mind that between the time period of completing a book; and the time it gets published, there is a large amount of time where things can change and not able to be updated.

Worse case scenario is that you have a really nice set of chips to start your own collection.