I concur - Many blame
@Windwalker for extravagant pricing, but he's not. Those that do are only using him as a fall guy.
If I went out today and offered $20 a chip for Tigers, it would not make all tigers more expensive. It sure as hell wouldn't make the Boat chips more expensive, or any other chip. I would simply have payed over market value to get what I wanted. The chips I bought would go for $20 each, and the remaining Tigers in the world would sit idly in the classifieds, still looking for the right connection between buyer and seller.
It was every other purchase since then that railed prices. It takes a buyer and a seller to set a price, and a continual stream of buyers/sellers to "set" a price. Even then the price really isn't "set". It's just what they go for as of the last transaction.
Perhaps
@ekricket is right and the CODID payments from the government boosted prices. Perhaps the chip market languished at $1-$2 per chip for so long it trailed inflation, and the jump was just a correction - perhaps even an over-correction.
But nobody should poo-poo WW for getting what he wanted, and for finding a break-point where fingers were pried off chips and replaced with cash.