~~~ when I ran my ivory want ads where thousands of chips were stored in plastic tubs just like that by collectors I have never heard of... and when I asked one (actually a few) family member how was all this accumulated, their response was "neighbors, friends and barn sales."

Been to exactly six such homes back then and all the rooms where the chips were stored looked exactly like you show and I was never successful in obtaining one collection and, have never seen any of the unusual monogrammed chip sets, since, of which some were huge sets of up to 4,000 chips in oak cases.

I have always been amazed how some collectors with such huge collections are virtually unknown to anyone other than by a very few... and not just here in the US, but in South America, Europe (France and Spain) and India... and probably elsewhere... and I have never noticed the pattern of networking with the exception of a few phone calls that I received back then.

Eisenstadt told me the same thing when he used to be contacted by families in Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts (and NYC, of course), but the collections were small and only a few monogrammed sets. He had explained that the stuff usually stays within families and virtually never found at any sales (auctions) which, is still amazing to me how the JOSEPHINE set of Widener's was in an auction and without one bid from anyone while being from such a well known family.

(Btw, the set was cataloged and called as being bone.)