Rick,
Welcome to the hobby. Although I don't classify myself as being "offended" by your request for donations to give you "seed chips" for future trading purposes, I do think it's rather presumptous of you to assume that just because someone has duplicate chips they should send them to you. There are many very generous collectors who will voluntarily send chips to new collectors free of charge, including postage, to get them started, but you are the first that I can remember that actually posted a request for us to do that. I appreciate your honesty that you have very limited funds and that you have no access to local casinos to acquire traders, but, as with any hobby, there are costs involved with chip collecting that go beyond the actual chips: postage, packaging materials, pricing guides, research publications, etc. As all of us eventually have to do, you have to adjust your collecting activity to match your available budget.

Ron