It looks like we can finally quantify the effect that slabbing might have on chip sales, with Sahara Coins’ auctions expiring today. Let’s see if we can learn anything:

First and foremost, a slabbed version of the famous $1200 Horseshoe 25-cent arrowdie commanded a staggering $103.50. In an auction earlier in the day, the exact same chip sold for $204.01. It looks like The Chip Rack is going to have to include another code for this one: in VGD condition it’s a “Q” and in SLABBED state it’s an “N”.

A Caesars $5 scroll chip, in very nice condition I might add, sold for a very nice $2.83. One can only imagine how much value the grading and encapsulating added to this one. (We now know that it costs about 15 bucks to turn an "F" chip into an "A" chip).

The $5 Boulder Club went for a smooth $10.01. I know this one usually sells in the $20 range. (How much did that slab cost?)

A $25 Carousel went for $11.05, once again, not even paying for the capsule. A $100 Carousel, in MS 64 condition, no less, brought in a nifty $21.03.

Finally, A $1 Wilbur Clark’s Desert Inn sold for $127.50, an excellent clearance price on a $300+ chip.

Now, it’s obvious that pursuant to Mr. Scott’s recent no-bid listings, he included the lower-end chips and started off his no-reserve auctions at $1 with the sole purpose of generating action of any kind. With Sahara’s annual multi-million-dollar sales, the losses on these chips obviously won’t be a factor. These auction results, however, clearly demonstrate that that encapsulating and grading do NOTHING to enhance the selling prices (and therefore values) of chips… quite the opposite in fact.

So, “The List” that Mr. Scott ridicules in his posts, seems to have some teeth after all. 403 non-bidders. Mr. Scott represents that “The List” is a fringe group that is not representative of the hobby in general. The pro-slab contingent uses the fuzzy mathematics that puts forth that there are only 403 or so against slabbing because that is the number of chippers on “The List”, and that 403 is a small number when measured against the 2500+ members of the CC>CC and balance of the chipping community.

What Mr. Scott and the rest of his pro-slab contingent fail to recognize is that you should consider the readers of The Chip Board to be a microcosm of the chipping world in general… and there is no reason this should not be true. The 400+ adherents of the anti-slab ethos should then be measured against the readership of the board and NOT of the chipping world in general. Additionally, I believe that Mr. Scott and others have attempted to initiate some Pro-Slab “lists” with a resounding lack of response.

My question for the pro-slab fuzzy mathematicians is this: Could it be that rather than 15% of chippers being against slabbing, as your math would suggest, maybe 95%+ are against slabbing, which seems to be the case here on The Chip Board? If you accept this more realistic math, then, giving the slabbers the benefit of the doubt, the sales universe of slabbed chips is limited to maybe 10% of the community of chip collectors. Is this good business sense? Now that we’ve had a little experience, does slabbing seem like good business sense? Will we see some high-end chips being auctioned by Sahara starting at $1 with no reserve?

No, No, and No.

Jay Sands
CC>CC R-4390
SlabFree CM-24
SoCal CH-96