Okay, then… let’s say you were writing a price guide. How would you price the particular chip? My point is that there eBay has created a bifurcation of the market (wholesale/retail analogy). If, for example, you take a look at the results of Doug Saito’s auctions, you’d swear that none of his customers has heard of eBay. My question related to which paradigm do you prefer?

When you made the comparison of a $5000 chip to Doug’s $5 Bucket of Blood chips, I think you’re comparing apples to oranges.

Although they were in the same paragraph, I hadn’t intended to compare the two, only to illustrate that the two different scenarios have effects on perceived values.

Maybe the hobby has 25 people that would spend $5000 for a single chip, but clearly an exponential number that will spend $100 for a chip. And as Doug ran out of Bucket of Blood chips, and when Dale Stuart runs out of Trop chips, and when I run out of Dunes Brown and Pink 1st issue roulettes, the market did/will move up somewhat and stabilize. On the other hand, if suddenly 50 Sands $5 2nd issue arodies came on the market; do you think they would now bring $33,000 each? I don’t think you’d have your 25 high end buyers paying $5000 each.

No, of course not. That would never happen. There is probably a metric you could think up, based on the intrinsic desirability of the chip and the collecting preferences of the deep-pocket guys, but if I had to take a stab I would guess that a population of maybe 15 of those would yield a price point of $5000 each.

To expand on your statement, I believe the hobby is static. And not only is the hobby IMO static, but because of that and that one individual that caused prices to spike, you are seeing a retraction in the hobby.

I think that the retraction is only perceived by a tiny minority of the hobby, as the results of those one-time buys really only impact the realm of buyers of such top-end chips (such as yourself) and those who study the market.

I agree that guides have ratings and prices that make no sense at all. I can cite an R-5 chip that I have been looking for, for years and only know of two.

I’d love to accumulate a list of these… I think that accuracy important to the hobby in general.

As for the $5 River Queen, I wish I was one of the later victims that paid $500. I would feel that was a bargain compared to what I got stuck for.

Oy!