How you start out will be different after you have a coule thousand chips in your collection. I use binders for both my collection and traders.

For my collection, I have organized them in 20 chip pages in binders as follows:

Obsolete Las Vegas
Obsolete Nevada
Current Nevada
Hard Rock & Le's
Washington & Oregon
California
Mississippi-Louisiana-Florida-Atlantic City
Cruise Ships and Fantasy
Mich-Indiana-Illinois-Iowa
N. Dakota-S. Dakota-Minesota-Montana
Oklahoma-Kansas-Missouri-Texas
Colorado-New Mexico-Arizona
Foreign chips
Illegal Casinos & Antique Poker chips

I'll soon be making a few more binders...as soon as i get the new binders in. I'll be making Obsolete Reno a seperate book. And also a few seperate books for my roulette chips

For my traders, I use 30 chip pages and put them in regular ole 3 ring binders. I have quite a few different notebooks for traders as well, all organized by good.

It all depends on what your focus is. Mine is Obsolete Nevada, & HR $5.00. I have now gotten into Roulette chips much more and of course my standard $1.00 and lower from everywhere in the entire civilized and uncivilized world.

As for LE's, I just collect HR chips and a few that really trip my trigger (like the "But It's A Dry Heat" from Harrahs)

I do have a gazillion $5.00 le's on my trade list, but mostly i get them to trade for HR chips and obsolete chips.

Ive found as my collection grew and my numbers of traders, my binder requirements have changed as well. I often move my chips around in the binders because I like playing with them, and I like to keep them organized by casino and city. So as I pick up chips, I move stuff around. Many people dont like doing this, but i love it. I enjoy touching them and handling them. Thats something that couldnt be possible if Slabbing ever becomes popular. Thats one of the reasons i will fight tooth and nail against slabbing until my last dying breath. Ah, but thats another story.

All of my current Nevada chips are in wall displays along with current chips from all over. I also have a display with just foreign chips. As one becomes obsolete, I remove the chip and replace it. I have three 84 chip displays at home and one in my office at work.

Hope this helps a bit.