Interesting you post this now.
When you posted this picture (quoted below), I was going to ask what is keeping you going collecting when seemingly no set is out of reach, and you'd likely need a year plus to get every set you do have into play. I'm not coming from a place of judgement, rather just some curiosity about why the desire to continue acquiring? Thrill of the hunt/score, especially in a hard to find set? Was it for "completeness" of the collection? Eye candy for display?
I was just re-reading an "almost essay" I wrote on the forum close to a year ago, about why we collect things and why the prices keep going up. I'm reposting it here, because some of it answers your questions above.
As the individual who has arguably spent the most money on PCF in the last few months on buying chips, I thought I’d share my perspective on some of the issues raised. I believe these kinds of debates are essential to a collecting community, and it’s interesting to see the factions of opinions that exist.
A gentleman stated in an earlier post that “prices I am seeing are just straight stupid. [snip] Paulson's are made for considerably less than $1/chip”. One person argued with that literal price quote by waving a GPI catalog around, others agreed with the sentiment, and yet others talked about supply and demand as the challenge.
While the supply-and-demand argument is the fairest of them all, in my opinion, it’s just one factor that drives these prices – in a community of collectors (which we mostly are,) the price of the collectible has nothing to do with manufacturing value. We could make that same argument for comic books – it costs less than 30 cents on average to print a book, but the value assigned has nothing to do with printing costs, just like the value assigned to chips have nothing to do with manufacturing costs.
Different types of collectors value different things. Rigby and Rigby, in their history of collecting, argue for the consideration of polygamy (either serial or simultaneous) as a form of collecting, drawing a direct analogy when they state: “Henry VIII, specializing in wives and in tapestries, acquired six items in the first category and two thousand in the latter.”
Studies have posited a range of interrelated motivations for collecting. From a psychological perspective, Danet and Katriel suggest that collectors collect so as to pursue closure/completion/perfection, using five strategies to attain this goal:
1) completing a series or set; (
which we do)
2) filling a physical space (for example, a wall in their house); (
our chip displays)
3) creating a visually pleasing, harmonious display; (
Pr0n)
4) manipulating the scale of objects (for example, collecting miniatures); and
5) aspiring to perfect objects. (
mint chips)
From a sociological perspective, others have suggested that collecting is done in part so as to achieve entry into and maintain status in a social group of similarly-minded persons.
The existence of psychological and group membership motives for investing in collectibles is what produces disparate beliefs about the likely financial rewards of this activity. Ask the proverbial person on the street about investing in collectibles and you will likely get one of two reactions. Reaction number one: “Collectibles can be a great investment, especially if you can figure out what the next hot market is. If only I had invested in Avedon photos (or baseball cards) before the market started going up!” Reaction number two: “Collectibles as an investment is a dumb idea! They’ve got to have a lower rate of return than a real investment like stocks. You buy collectibles to enjoy owning them, not to make money.”
Because of the nonpecuniary—perhaps even nonrational—rewards from owning collectibles, there is reason to think it may be possible to make extraordinary profits in this area. Collectibles are estranged from cost fundamentals, since production concerns are irrelevant once you are in the resale market, and the numbers of buyers and sellers involved may be relatively low. Such a market may be easy for a small number of persons to manipulate.
I think it comes down to the following additional considerations (after supply and demand):
Popularity: Something becomes collectible when it has a fan-base that generates demand for the item. The greater the fan-base and the more loyal the fans, the greater the collectability of that thing.
Scarcity: One of the reasons I bought up all the Cocaine Giraffes I could is because I knew in addition to how unique and awesome the chips were, their story and lack of use is extremely rare. The family drama adds intrigue. I rib Tom for not letting me have the rest of them, but the truth is, if I considered good collecting strategy, having a small batch of 1000 chips outside of my collection constantly change hands, be seen and coveted only takes the value of my own collection up more, instead of getting forgotten once I have them all.
Longevity: Does the story and set have “staying power”? This is the heart of the argument, for me, about the
NAGB chips. A lot of the other chips that are seen as desirable came from real casinos or boats, with real stories. The
NAGB chips have survived that scrutiny for a few reasons, I think. First, they’re damned good looking, and designed for playability; Second, there’s s PCF story behind them; designed by PCFers, now used by PCFers. And within PCF, that value is probably going to hold for a while, until the next batch of
NAGB chips come in, and so on.
So why did I sell off all my
NAGB sets? In my opinion as a collector, their collectible value is ephemeral. Once new
NAGB-type sets come in, or other chip discoveries are made, I do believe they will drop from their current collectible values. The story behind them is fun and interesting, but it isn’t nostalgic or universally cool, like some of the leaded sets are.
Case in point, I recently bid/won an auction for ESST chips after I found out they were WSOP tribute chips -- it instantly changed the value of the chips, for me.
But, that’s ONE person’s opinion. Ultimately, all of the factors above, and of course, the average disposable income of new collectors, will determine what prices will be, and whether they will stay or climb. I am completely aware that there aren’t many people who collect chips who are willing to pay what I am sometimes willing to pay, to acquire something. But that’s literally the definition of a free market.
The key thing to know, which I hope most people do, is like most of us here, I buy for the love of chips and chipping, and almost nothing else.
