Over the years I have seen two different strategies for acquiring merchandise for sale:
- buying collections, accumulations, boxes, etc. from individuals; and
- buying chips for dealers at less than full value

I believe that this particular seller tries to "buy for value". I have seen him purchase items from me on eBay at what I felt was fair retail, but below any book price, and then relist them at book value in an attempt to make a profit. I have no problems with a person buying something from me at my price with the goal of making a profit. That it what makes the system work. I can remember 15-18 years ago buying chips from Jerry Wall at 20% of the then current TCR, and then selling or trading the. At the TCR value. At the time prices were climbing and it was possible to walk the convention and find lots of underpriced chips that could easily be bought and quickly resold for a profit.

However, where I disagree with the strategy is when people knowingly misrepresent information. For example, quoting a chip as a specific level of rarity when you have racks of them. I have seen many sellers claim a specific rarity on chips that they know is wrong in order to raise values. Additionally, I had another dealer once make up stories about how he had once had racks of a rare chip that I found 8 - $100's and 20 - $25's of in order to depress my prices. This was done for no other reason that to mess with me.

As far as the $1 Barney's chip what a mess. I bought six at $50 each, and once I realized the situation, I sold several of them on eBay for $50 each in order to try to recoup most of my investment. Interestingly, the person who is the subject of the David's post on this topic was a buyer of two of them. I traded a couple off at the convention at $50 each as well, and bought a few more at what I thought was a screaming deal. Such is the life of the speculator.

Wishing you the best.

John