Hi Archie,
Thanks for the nice post, & nice comments about me. Those auctions really are fun & as mentioned about the Sands chip it is fun to be high bidder. It sure is fun to read the intelligent posts like yours. Yours always say something to get us thinking even more! Your views are always appreciated. For the new comers to the hobby who might not know it was YOU who formed a group of collectors & turned it into our club we have today the CASINO CHIP & GAMING TOKEN COLLECTORS CLUB! That must of been work to keep going for was it 10 years you put in? I've got to tell you though it wold be hard for someone to imagine the work it took to digitally photo all the 6,000 chips we have in our archives & the lay out & price figuring & 100's of hours on the phone to other collectors to see if they agreed on a price or rarity. SO many more factors came up that we never drempt of. The self publishing was tough! The first book is always the toughest. With Schiffer Publishing picking it up to make the 2nd book happen it of course was less work. They had their own graphic designer & others assigned to doing what they know best. They are about the biggest publishers of antique & collectible books & by the way here is there web address as they have so many books it is unreal. The final outcome has been an attribute to our hobby. Definetly nothing of financial gain. www.schifferbooks.com. I will do a seperate post as wellon the book subject.

You made a great point I had not thought about. Will the slabbing companies stand behind the transaction if it somehow goes wrong? I dont see how they can so the answer is must be NO. I know I stand behind my deals & have had to in the past when groups of chips came out or something suddenly drastically changed. I abide by the club rules & have gone way beyond even their 10 day return. They are there for a reason & I do recall in the past on votes that it is hard to get the membership all involved. On this issue more will be involved than any other I can think of!

I really dont see the concern on the cheaper chips being slabbed. What price range are you talking? I believe only chips worth a few hundred bucks will be worth grading if it ever happens. There are some chips like this known though by the box, or two! They will never get all chips to grade so a true statement that they have seen the top chip whereas there are hundreds would be impossible to make. I know I have a lot of top chips in my collection & I know most others well that collect the same. You are right we do know the grade ourselves. We are our own experts! They should know this. Rather it is visual & we say it is an XF or if we are specific & break down numbers & come up with a XF mid number of 75 if we are true collectors we have examined lots of chips. They dont need our market. They will have to make their own that is why they probably dont care about any posts on the board or even what the hobby thinks. They have someone sending in chips, some one selling chips & some one apparently more involved. Is it a collector??????? I hardly think he is. I know you are all dying to know who it is. He has posted on here. From what I have been told by a friend in Vegas. Mark Scott owner of Sahara Coins in Las Vegas has many slabbed chips for sale in his shop on Sahara & Decatur in Vegas. If this needs verification someone could email me privatly & I could dig out his phone number. I do not deal with him nor have any interest in dealing with anyone like him. No not for the fact he is slabbing. Many others of my own.

Condition rarity is something we worked on for the 2nd edition. You'll see that instead of $50 100 150. We raised the high end to 200. DOuble the mid grade if we felt the chip was truely very rare to find it the top condition. I have seen probably more chips than anyone. I have studied long & hard for about 15 years now. I have always been concerned about condition whereas when I picked up a group of chips I would keep the best ones out to check into my collection to hopefully upgrade. I learned what is tough to find in top condition! I am still looking for a Centerfold Las Vegas, $5 in top cond. In our 2nd edition Centerfold is a good example where the price is double for a top specimen.
I do know that the super rare chips like my Sands & some rare Sahara's & other major strip hotels which are the hottest & rarest chips that there are other buyers.

Time to got to the beach.

Happy New Year everyone.

Will someone build me a snowman? I cant seem to find any snow around here. I bet Greg or Andy cold make a great one! A snowman that will be standing there doing something to a slabbed chip!
James in sunny Santa Barbara, CA.