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Have we finally reached market saturation?? (6 Viewers)

Taghkanic said:
Do people in suits who lend money really recognize poker chips as a valuable commodity which can serve as collateral / securitization for a loan?
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Fantastic question! No idea. I think it’s an interesting topic though. Idk, if I have a $500,000 home vs car vs Pokémon card vs poker set vs toast that looks like Jesus - how difficult is each in relation regarding securing financial consideration for.

aggie said:
I’m gonna open a club called Full-Tilt Speculation.
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Lol my guesswork is only around topics I find interesting. Not what’s going on with WW or specific chips. I think collectors and collections are interesting.
Tonysquander said:
I think you are looking at it too narrowly, as is the OP. The "market" is not limited to PCF. It is the entire world. So the answer to the question posited by the OP is an unequivocal "no", the "market" is not saturated and never will be.
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You have got to be fucking kidding me. This must be how women feel with mansplaining.

Thank you for telling me that I correctly interpreted OPs question but that my answer is somehow in the wrong lense.

His question is specific to PCF. He is not looking at the chip sales globally and specifically in other markets. The entire question is around, is this market saturated.

Tonysquander said:
Whether the PCFcentric market is saturated is a different question
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No, it’s literally the question being asked. YOUR point and topic is a different question. Fucking public school systems these days.
 
BarrieJ3 said:
Fantastic question! No idea. I think it’s an interesting topic though. Idk, if I have a $500,000 home vs car vs Pokémon card vs poker set vs toast that looks like Jesus - how difficult is each in relation regarding securing financial consideration for.


Lol my guesswork is only around topics I find interesting. Not what’s going on with WW or specific chips. I think collectors and collections are interesting.

You have got to be fucking kidding me. This must be how women feel with mansplaining.

Thank you for telling me that I correctly interpreted OPs question but that my answer is somehow in the wrong lense.

His question is specific to PCF. He is not looking at the chip sales globally and specifically in other markets. The entire question is around, is this market saturated.


No, it’s literally the question being asked. YOUR point and topic is a different question. Fucking public school systems these days.
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He references "secondary market" in addition to PCF classifieds but you read it how you want.

Also, there are many fine public schools in our country today, many of which are better than the private ones (or maybe you just meant to limit that broad reference to the public schools within a 5 mile radius of Boham, TX or something...)
 
BarrieJ3 said:
. Fucking public school systems these days.
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Lol parents drop their kid off at “free day care” and don’t have a clue what goes in in that building. Yeah, blame the fucking schools for not caring about the kids the parents don’t care about. Fucking uneducated, at least some of us went to some kind of school.
Unfortunately you get out of it what you put into it. Looks like there were some slackers around at some point, you can tell because they are always blaming an institution.
 
BarrieJ3 said:
I might be completely 100% wrong as this is a total guess, but it’s hard to imagine anyone with accountants and a head for business/financials would let an asset like a high end collection sit somewhere without actively making money on it. I’m guessing it’s insured, borrowed against, and making money in markets.
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Rest assured WW doesn’t need to borrow money or sell anything. I like to think he does whatever makes him happy and that’s it.
 
Tonysquander said:
He references "secondary market" in addition to PCF classifieds but you read it how you want.

Also, there are many fine public schools in our country today, many of which are better than the private ones (or maybe you just meant to limit that broad reference to the public schools within a 5 mile radius of Boham, TX or something...)
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“Classifieds are full of nice chips for sale, Jim lowers some prices during a sale to move chips. It’s never been tougher to sell chips on the secondary market.”

This means in addition? And secondary market means the global market?

So you started by saying that I interpreted correctly, but that OP and I were wrong:
Tonysquander said:
I think you are looking at it too narrowly, as is the OP. The "market" is not limited to PCF. It is the entire world.
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But now you're just saying that OP is correct, and that I and every other person in these 5 pages interpreted him incorrectly:
Tonysquander said:
He references "secondary market" in addition to PCF classifieds but you read it how you want.
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The public schools comment has nothing to do with public schools, it was a tongue in cheek way of me trying to avoid calling you a moron in this specific exchange.
 
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DirtyTIVA said:
Rest assured WW doesn’t need to borrow money or sell anything. I like to think he does whatever makes him happy and that’s it.
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I’ve never thought he needed to do either. I don’t know nor care about his worth, colelction, etc., more so the generic example.

I think it’s foolhardy to assume that people with wealth don’t engage in making more money because they have enough.

If I’m worth 10-50 million, would I own quarter to a million in assets and let them sit? No idea. But “needing to borrow money” isn’t the idea, borrowing money is one the top ways that people with wealth acquire more. Maybe in this specific example it’s not what’s happening, and I have no clue, but I’m interested if collectors with high value collections let them sit just to have or create financial momentum.
 
Thought experiment! Let’s do some basic, spitball-y arithmetic about a theoretical Very Large Collection:
  • You have a mammoth collection of 500,000 chips
  • You have 250 playable sets averaging 2,000 chips/each
  • All of your chips are desirable, many are hard to find
  • You paid on average $5/chip, conservatively
Math:
  • Your total cost basis of your collection is $2.5M
  • Your average cost per set is $10,000
To liquidate the whole collection piece-by-piece, at cost, you’d need to sell:
  • 5 sets per week
  • Every week, for almost a full year
  • For an average of $10,000 per set
So:

Are there 250 buyers out there (on and off PCF) with 10K to spend on 2,000-chip sets?

Even if the chips are incredible, and even if a handful of people buy multiple sets, it seems like tough sledding... Especially after the first few weeks of excitement, after which the main consumers will start to feel full, maybe even bloated. It seems likely that you’d eventually need to slow down the listing frequency a lot, and/or reduce prices below cost.

Conclusion: Selling most or all of the collection to 1-3 very rich people, or testing the high-end auction market, or donating a major portion of it to an institution for a tax write-off, seems much more feasible than selling via a site like this.

P.S.: Personally speaking, I have five playable sets of roughly 1,000-1,200 chips each, plus some random barrels and racks. If I ever tried to sell my (relatively paltry) holdings, I would probably try to sell one every couple of months, not five in one week. And I would expect that some of the sets wouldn’t sell quickly, though they are all nice, unless I took a small loss... so I might have to resort to splits or listing them by the rack/barrel.
 
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BarrieJ3 said:
“Classifieds are full of nice chips for sale, Jim lowers some prices during a sale to move chips. It’s never been tougher to sell chips on the secondary market.”

This means in addition? And secondary market means the global market?

So you started by saying OP was wrong. Your first position was he was asking the wrong question. Now you’re saying that he was right, and that my specific interpretation was wrong. (By the way, it would mean all 5 pages of this thread interpreted it incorrectly).

I’m not saying anything about public schools or your area of schools. It was me trying to be tongue in cheek and avoid calling you a bogan or something worse that breaks ToS. Imbecile
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Thanks Barrie, resorting to childish name calling certainly lends credence to all of your posts. I feel honored to be yet another PCF member whom you have deigned to insult.

If YOU had bothered to fully comprehend what I was saying, you would have seen that I began my post by pointing out the "secondary market" reference should not be seen as limited to PCF: "The "market" is not limited to PCF. It is the entire world." I then expounded on that premise to discuss why the "market" as I redefined it will never be saturated. I next addressed the specific PCF market discussed by the OP and how that specific market would need to be further broken down to potentially answer the question.

Anyhow, I will call it a day in trying to explain myself. I think everyone else understood the gist of what I was posting about. Sorry it triggered you or maybe you're just having a tough morning.

I hope your day improves from here.

Best wishes,

TS
 
Tonysquander said:
Thanks Barrie, resorting to childish name calling certainly lends credence to all of your posts. I feel honored to be yet another PCF member whom you have deigned to insult.

If YOU had bothered to fully comprehend what I was saying, you would have seen that I began my post by pointing out the "secondary market" reference should not be seen as limited to PCF: "The "market" is not limited to PCF. It is the entire world." I then expounded on that premise to discuss why the "market" as I redefined it will never be saturated. I next addressed the specific PCF market discussed by the OP and how that specific market would need to be further broken down to potentially answer the question.

Anyhow, I will call it a day in trying to explain myself. I think everyone else understood the gist of what I was posting about. Sorry it triggered you or maybe you're just having a tough morning.

I hope your day improves from here.

Best wishes,

TS
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None of the above jives with the below comment.
Tonysquander said:
He references "secondary market" in addition to PCF classifieds but you read it how you want.
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It’s the internet and written word. If you have to do mental gymnastics to explain yourself, or if people need to interpret what you’re saying or take leaps of logic to “get the gist”, fine.

Feel free to take the higher ground because I referenced you as an imbecile in this interaction.

Nothing triggered me, you inserted yourself poorly, explained as such a tenured chipper how we should have thought about a topic that wasn’t yours, and then failed to articulate in a logical means.

“name calling” is certainly the life buoy keyword to shout after being on the wrong side of a disagreement. Seems objective, in this interaction I was a jackwagon and you were a dumbass. Happy to leave it at that.
 
BarrieJ3 said:
None of the above jives with the below comment.

It’s the internet and written word. If you have to do mental gymnastics to explain yourself, or if people need to interpret what you’re saying or take leaps of logic to “get the gist”, fine.

Feel free to take the higher ground because I referenced you as an imbecile in this interaction.

Nothing triggered me, you inserted yourself poorly, explained as such a tenured chipper how we should have thought about a topic that wasn’t yours, and then failed to articulate in a logical means.

“name calling” is certainly the life buoy keyword to shout after being on the wrong side of a disagreement. Seems objective, in this interaction I was a jackwagon and you were a dumbass. Happy to leave it at that.
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Dude. Did you unbogan an earlier comment? Did you think he was too much of a bogan to understand bogan?
 
upNdown said:
Dude. Did you unbogan an earlier comment? Did you think he was too much of a bogan to understand bogan?
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You made me laugh out loud.

But in all serious no, I don’t think he as a person is a bogan (potentially, who knows). In this interaction sure, but aren’t we all.

Man we should have one of the local Boston or mass holes at the meetup. That would be a nice finishing touch to the roster.
 
Taghkanic said:
Thought experiment! Let’s do some basic, spitball-y arithmetic about a theoretical Very Large Collection:
  • You have a mammoth collection of 500,000 chips
  • You have 250 playable sets averaging 2,000 chips/each
  • All of your chips are desirable, many are hard to find
  • You paid on average $5/chip, conservatively
Math:
  • Your total cost basis of your collection is $2.5M
  • Your average cost per set is $10,000
To liquidate the whole collection piece-by-piece, at cost, you’d need to sell:
  • 5 sets per week
  • Every week, for almost a full year
  • For an average of $10,000 per set
So:

Are there 250 buyers out there (on and off PCF) with 10K to spend on 2,000-chip sets?

Even if the chips are incredible, and even if a handful of people buy multiple sets, it seems like tough sledding... Especially after the first few weeks of excitement, after which the main consumers will start to feel full, maybe even bloated. It seems likely that you’d eventually need to slow down the listing frequency a lot, and/or reduce prices below cost.

Conclusion: Selling most or all of the collection to 1-3 very rich people, or testing the high-end auction market, or donating a major portion of it to an institution for a tax write-off, seems much more feasible than selling via a site like this.

P.S.: Personally speaking, I have five playable sets of roughly 1,000-1,200 chips each, plus some random barrels and racks. If I ever tried to sell my (relatively paltry) holdings, I would probably try to sell one every couple of months, not five in one week. And I would expect that some of the sets wouldn’t sell quickly, though they are all nice, unless I took a small loss... so I might have to resort to splits or listing them by the rack/barrel.
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Found WW’s posts about this, 28 & 31 in this thread. May have met his net goal and moved on.
https://www.pokerchipforum.com/thre...-advice-for-newbies.88152/page-2#post-1809144
 
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Tonysquander said:
Found WW’s posts about this, 28 & 31 in this thread. May have met his net goal and moved on.
https://www.pokerchipforum.com/thre...-advice-for-newbies.88152/page-2#post-1809144
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What sucks is that he took several hundred thousand chips out of this communities circulation and they will probably never be seen again. Prior to his purchasing spree those chips were at least in the community and being sold/traded among members or being used as small playable sets. Now they are pretty much gone forever.

People got paid for them, but still kinda sucks that the chips are gone.
 
TKEUofM said:
What sucks is that he took several hundred thousand chips out of this communities circulation and they will probably never be seen again. Prior to his purchasing spree those chips were at least in the community and being sold/traded among members or being used as small playable sets. Now they are pretty much gone forever.

People got paid for them, but still kinda sucks that the chips are gone.
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Chip harvesting to another level lol. Evolultion of some hobbies/collections :-(
 
BarrieJ3 said:
Huh? Why? His best bet is to sell off chips so that there is a competitive market to increase the price and people seeking his remaining chips?

Lol one of us is completely off but I’m not sure who.
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Have you ever tried selling a truly one of a kind chip set that is large enough so that none of the individual chips are considered rare/collectible as singles?

I suppose now that relabeling is a thing there could be an interest in murder racks, but there is no competitive demand from anyone who might be trying to add to their own set. You either need to sell the entire lot to one buyer, who values it the same as you do, or you need to somehow create a market from multiple buyers.
 
Taghkanic said:
Not to mention the massive PITA of shipping them out piecemeal. It would require hiring a couple of kids full-time for a year+, and training them in our recondite shipping rituals.
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Learned a new word today, I appreciate that!

Recondite, adjective

(of a subject or knowledge) little known; abstruse.
"the book is full of recondite information"
 
More math:

————-

Say I paid $10,000 for 2,000 chips.

Smart PCFers think I way overpaid at $5 per chip.

But I want to get to “net zero” on my collection, keeping half of it and selling the other half to cover my cost.

That now means I’ve got to sell a 1,000 chips — previously overvalued at $5/each — for twice as much, $10/each.

It’s going to be tough.

But maybe I get lucky and find one rich private game runner who doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the chipping market, who is willing to overpay 2x my own overpayment.

Cool, right? Easy peasy.

Now imagine I have to unload hundreds of thousands of chips at double my cost just to get even.

No private game needs that many chips. Maybe at most they want 2-3,000. I have to find and hoodwink a hundred+ such private games to get to net zero. The networking and negotiating would take up all my time.

Seems challenging for mere mortals like me. It would take a superhero.
 
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Taghkanic said:
More math:

————-

Say I paid $10,000 for 2,000 chips.

Smart PCFers think I way overpaid at $5 per chip.

But I want to get to “net zero” on my collection, keeping half of it and selling the other half to cover my cost.

That now means I’ve got to sell a 1,000 chips — previously overvalued at $5/each — for twice as much, $10/each.

It’s going to be tough.

But maybe I get lucky and find one rich private game runner who doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the chipping market, who is willing to overpay 2x my own overpayment.

Cool, right? Easy peasy.

Now imagine I have to unload hundreds of thousands of chips at double my cost just to get even.

No private game needs that many chips. Maybe at most they want 2-3,000. I have to find and hoodwink a hundred+ such private games to get to net zero. The networking and negotiating would take up all my time.

Seems challenging for mere mortals like me. It would take a superhero.
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Like Robin.
 
Poker Zombie said:
@ovo 's. Not even a thought. If I had a choice of being gifted WW or ovo's entire collection (or even simply seeing it), I wouldn't hesitate for a second.
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Lol, everyone hating on WW for hoarding chips yet @ovo has more and is even more well known for not turning things loose.
At least @Windwalker had sales and giveaways and was very willing to trade.
Ovo is a black hole, you may as well grind your chips up, because you are never seeing them again. Pillar of the community.
 
Poker Zombie said:
@ovo 's. Not even a thought. If I had a choice of being gifted WW or ovo's entire collection (or even simply seeing it), I wouldn't hesitate for a second.
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I’m gonna throw up in my mouth as I say it, but I’m pretty sure I’d go for windwalker’s. It took him 6 months to a year to actually learn about the chips he was buying, but once he did, his focus on what he considered to be the good stuff very much aligned with my tastes. From what I’ve seen, Ovo is less discriminating. He’s got some of the best, but he’s got plenty of other stuff too.
 
BarrieJ3 said:
Despite my personal distaste, always found the issues with WW as a chipper laughable. We see it here on a constant basis, someone wants something or needs to fill a gap, and overpays to get it done.

Every WTB of Looking For ad out there better be offering above market price, otherwise why are you posting?

The only part I am curious in and the reason I don’t think we will ever see chips again from serious collectors (idk if there’s one outside of WW) - don’t they monetize their collections?

As in, I now found, purchased, and own X# of one of a kind or limited quantity clay discs. Regardless of what I paid, I determine their value now, as I would only ever sell for $Y. Now I set the value as high as possible, have it insured for as high as possible, and now can borrow against that asset.

I might be completely 100% wrong as this is a total guess, but it’s hard to imagine anyone with accountants and a head for business/financials would let an asset like a high end collection sit somewhere without actively making money on it. I’m guessing it’s insured, borrowed against, and making money in markets.
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Most banks won’t loan against collectibles whose value can fluctuate wildly and furthermore whose value is largely determined by the price someone is willing to pay.

Perhaps very mature collectibles with credible and established means for assessing value - like a Picasso, or the like.

Casino chips, unlikely they would be considered collateral, and if so, would be valued at significantly reduced value.

Lenders want collateral they can liquidate quickly and easily.
 
upNdown said:
Pretty sure he had one single giveaway. He talked about others, but then somebody flashed an angry face at him and that was that.
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He gave a lot of people a lot of stuff behind the scenes, helping them complete sets and sample sets. He didn’t publicize it, as his intentions I believe were to help people, not build himself up.
The other wouldn’t help you fill a dice chip sample. But rag on
 

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