I greatly enjoy SOME of the LE's ...but what concerns me are a couple things.

1. is the potential beenie baby phenom. Some of the casinos are putting out a flavor of the week which to me undermines the value of their entire collection.

2. Some of the casinos put out chips with hardly any effort into the looks of the chips. I for one..collect only the LE's that i think are cool looking. Look at the imagination and quality of art work on the Harrahs Dry Heat chips. Now compair those with the simple cartoon like drawings on the four queen chips. Same effort? same level of art work?? I think not. BUt then again...nobody twists anybodys arm forcing you to buy a chip.

3. I worry about the manipulation of issues for merely $$$$$$ !! Two words: CINCO, SAMMY. Now the cancer has spread to the recent AC release.

4. In my humble opinion...many collectors are now collecting certain LE's merely for the investment opportunity. This to me has become continually worse. Collectors arent just collecting for their collect...they are collecting to make a buck. A new issue such as HR....as a whole...there are plenty of chips for all of the collectors. HOWEVER...when each collector buys 3-10...just to turn around and sell them on EBAY, well what does that do to the price. When ppl line up on the day of release and stand in line for hours and hours...does this make sense? What has happened here? are there really 5,000 people that all want the $5.00 HR chips for their collects..each and every time?? i think not. But this activity perpetuates the same from many others that wouldnt do that with any other chip.

Are we all lined up to buy the latest release of Four Queens $1.00 "Its sunny outside" chip? are we buying 5 of each to turn around and make a buck on ebay?

As things have developed...the world of chip collecting has turned many a simple collector in to a collector that hoards and sells on ebay.

Am I guilty of this myself...i would have to say yes. I sell on ebay. I use the same excuse that most of use do: I helps offset the costs of my collecting. I have quite a few justifications and excuses which I'll spare you all from hearing. But the fact remains the same...we buy to sell..which creates a void of availablity which makes the price go up which comes around to bite us in our own butts.

My future with LE's is simple....i buy the ones I like. I dont want them all. I dont even want them all from a small area even if i could get them all. BUt then again, I always prefer the simple $1.00 and lower old chips. I'd much rather have a 40 year old $1.00 chip that wasnt in my collection before thats worth $30.00 then a new LE worth $50 (No, Bob, Im not trading all my $50 LE's for your $30.00 $1.00 chips)

Thanks Bob for starting this interesting thread. I've enjoyed seeing all of the opinions