The majority of my collection was amassed via trade; not solely a chip-for-chip method since my interests are somewhat limited, regionally... so I always sought out those who collected what I was able to easilly find here in the USA in trade for what wasn't as easy for me to find here, but rather overseas. I traded stamps, beer coasters, auto tags, automonile club badges; med bottles, thread spools and hundreds of other things while providing a "field map" of where Maria, Karl, Jaques and whomever should start their search in order to balance a trade... I once wrote a few articles in UK collector magazines and for several years received chips/jetons/plaques as a gift with notes as to what those folks were looking for in Florida. I was lucky; for what cost me virtually nothing returned a bit more... (Mostly all pre-eBay, of course ).