With the introduction of sets of LE chips, I was trying to figure out if there's a consistent premium placed on complete sets vs. individual chips in a set. Or in general terms -- Is the whole greater than the sum of the parts?

A few examples:
1. The 10 piece "Fremont St. Experience" set of 10 $5 chips issued by 10 different casinos when it opened a few years ago. Clearly, the chips were picked up at different casinos, but it's still thought of as a set. Today, individual chips in this set are $10 or so. Then, should the set be priced at $100, or more, or less?

I'm guessing it depends on the demand for a single chip needed to complete someone's set (which would be worth MORE than $10 for THAT particular collector) vs. the demand for a complete set by a new collector that needs all 10, and might be willing to pay a premium for the entire set at once. The toughest set to sell at a decent price might be a nearly-completed set (say 6-8 chips out of 10) where the remaining ones are hard to find. Probably no alternative but to price and sell those chips individually. Or looking at it another way, suppose you have a complete set, priced at $100, and someone offers you $25 for 2 chips...but then you are left with an 8-piece "broken" set. Would you accept $25? 30? $35? No sale, except as a set? At what point would you say yes? (Hint: any rational seller would say yes at $60 for 2 chips from the set, because they would be left with 8 chips with a face value of $40 which could be cashed in: $60 + $40 = your $100 price for the full set, using the above example.)

2. Think about the series of 1-a-month chip sets issued by the Four Queens and Sunset Station, and others, recently. A 13-piece complete set is face value of $65, and sold for about $8-9 each from chip services when each chip was first issued. That means a complete 13-piece set costs between $65 (for locals, who got theirs from the cage each month) to $104-$117 (at the $8-9/each range). Now that these are no longer available at the cage, where do you think the price range for complete sets will settle? Below the $104-$117 range (in which case it would have been cheaper to wait and buy a set when complete, rather than once a month) or climbing steadily above that range? What about individual chips: more or less than 1/13th of the going price for the complete set?

Another example of the 1-a-month set is the Tropicana Zodiac set. Similar questions, except there's probably some demand for individual chips with your particular Zodiac sign on it.

3. Think about the hard to acquire Ramada Express "Back to the 40's" chip set. These were hard to get individually, and also hard to find the right ones on the secondary market to complete a set (assuming you weren't turned off by the difficulties in the first place). Same questions: should a complete set be priced more or less than 12x the price of an individual chip in the 12-piece set? And finally, what additional premium, if any, would you place on a complete set with the same number vs. a complete set with mixed numbers? (These were all numbered Bud Jones chips.)

4. One final example: Remember the Pioneer-Las Vegas 12-piece set of $5 chips. Neat idea, serial numbered H&C chips with interesting graphics. Only problem was that they sold MANY sets to the collector market before they closed, so there were (and still are?) many complete, mint-condition, same-serial-numbered sets out there in the collector market. It's my impression that it's tough to get $90 for the set (or just $7.50 per chip, below the cost of new chips from a service), because "everyone already has one". However, I've seen these sell for $8-10 indivudually on Ebay -- perhaps because someone likes the graphic on a particular chip, or because they need one to fill out a partial set. This may be an example where the chips in a set are worth LESS than individual chips.

I could give other examples, but you get the idea.Whaddya think? Just something I was pondering.

Well, gotta quit stalling and get back to doing my taxes. Yuck!