I’m curious how important the condition of a chip is to most collectors. I don’t want the conversation to stray into the realm of grading and/or slabbing, but I found the relative results of a couple of auctions this past weekend to be pretty startling and I’d like to hear the opinions of others.

The auctions were for these two chips from the Miner’s Club in Mountain City, NV:

These chips, by the way, were sold by James C., with the left (or top) one described as “uncirc” with the right one advertised as “used”. Within the description of the auction for the left chip, James wrote the following: “Most are used like the next lot I will run to see how important collectors feel condition is on a chip like this.”

What did he find out? The chip on the left wound up selling for $125.27. The chip on the right sold for $15.52. That’s an 8 to 1 ratio. I guess condition is pretty important to some, at least.

Now, the only market indicator I’ve seen for this chip prior to this weekend was an eBay sale this past February of a top-condition chip for $206. I would have expected the better chip this weekend to sell in the $150 range (James has a value of $150 in top condition for this one), but I would have expected the worn chip to go for about $50.

I suppose I could understand the ratio if these were, say, Las Vegas chips… ones that are normally found in lousy shape with condition rarity at the top of the scale (ie: $5 house chips from Vegas World, King 8, or Center-Fold). The reasons I say this are that there are far more Las Vegas collectors than small-town collectors… therefore there are far smaller percentage of “holes” in collections for these chips than for, say, the Miner’s Club chip, which would keep the demand and price down for the Las Vegas chips. Additionally, since so many collectors have the aforementioned Vegas chips in their collections, there are probably many who want to upgrade… which would keep the demand and price high for these chips in great condition.

As for the Miner’s Club, well… as Mr. Kruse would say, this one’s a different story. I would guess that relatively few of us have this chip in any condition in our collections and, although, again, there are definitely fewer small-town collectors than Las Vegas collectors, there are undoubtedly lots of us who consider that lack as a “hole”.

My next question, then, is if anyone finds these particular auction results surprising, enlightening, or expected. The importance of chip condition has not really been discussed here too widely. While the war of words raged here a while back about grading (slabbing), not too much was said about the importance to collectors of the condition of their chips or the market effects of condition (although quite a bit was said about the scale of grading).

This is obviously one area where James’ and Steve’s book and The Chip Rack diverge. TCR, while not ignoring condition, gives a value for only a single condition for each chip (with maybe a second value for a cancelled version if it is commonly found), where The Official U.S. Casino Chip Price Guide gives values for a range of conditions for each chip. I’d also be curious if most people who own both of these terrific books use James’ condition values as their standard or if they’re willing to extrapolate from TCR’s entry (eg: “Let’s see… if TCR has it listed as a $50 chip in VGD condition, it should then be worth $100 in mint condition).

My final question is this: do you consider yourself a “condition” collector or a “hole” collector? If you bring $75 to a chip show, for example, and were missing from your collection a $5 Vegas World, a $5 King 8, and a $5 Center-Fold (which, we’ll assume, are all on your “want” list)… would you spend it on a mint condition version of one of the above, or would you buy a usual – very worn – specimen of all three?