Robert

My view is that given that you cannot satisfy all of the people all of the time, I don;t think it's a matter of respectability. If there were no short issues (say, less than 1000) then there are unlikely to be any new chips which will give a challenge to collectors. However, the short chip runs also come in for critism from those who cannot obtain them.

As a collector who prefers $1 and 'standard' rack chips in his collection, I don't collect many LE's, only the ones I pick up when I'm in a casino or where I find an LE for sale or trade from a casino where I do not have any chips already in my collection. However if I had to have a preference, I personally (knowing that this is my view and that there can never be a solution that pleases everyone) do not object to the small releases. Yes, not everyone can have one of those chips, but it creates a number of premium chips to chase, and that is one aspect of any collecting hobby that I think a number of people enjoy.

The days of standard issue chips becoming rare are limited to the unusual circumstances of casinos closing very quickly, and even then the services of the New Issue Services (to which I subscribe to 2 and am extremenly happy with their services) mean that several hundered chips are likely to escape the casino very quickly, which means that only limited supply LEs can ever become difficult to find collectors items.

Of course, if there were no collectors, there would be very few LEs, which is the case in the UK where I live, and so the LE pictured below is scarce not because the supply did not exist, but because there were no collectors to snap them all up from the tables while they were in circulation. Not sure if that's relevant, but then I have a habit of going of at a tangeant!

As always, just my preferences, and some will agree and some will disagree. Regards all. Jason