Why do I collect chips? The question was posted here a while back. I've had a few drinks, and rather than over-bid on eBay, I offer the following:

I’ve never been a collector. I’ve been involved in a few collecting or trading industries in my life. Hell, I sorted baseball cards in undergrad. In and after law school I played the stock market for all it was worth – running $3,000 up to $250,000 and riding it back down to $55,000 in the crash before I cashed out.

But I never collected. Things I bought, traded and sold were just commodities.

I recently got into collecting casino chips -- for many reasons. None of them have anything to do with the reasons I accumulated, traded, bought, or sold things in the past.

I’ve always held onto chips because I love the way they feel in my hands. I probably never would have gambled as much as I have gambled in my life had I not been seduced by the smooth, sexy simplicity of a casino chip as it slips through my fingers.

I now collect recent LEs because they’re cool. I love the artwork. I also dig the way they are both rare and accessable. I admire their cash value, and the association with gambling. It all rolls into one. It’s cool that I can buy something new here in Vegas and trade it face value to someone in Atlantic City for a chip I like that he has. Value isn’t important. We like the chips.

I collect OBS because my grandfather died before he ever took me to Vegas. In 1975, when I was 8-years-old, my grandfather taught me to shoot crap in his home in Camden NJ. He went to Vegas a few times a year. I was the 10th or so of his grandkids, but I was the first to bear his name. I was also the first-born son of his only son. If he had lived, I have no doubt he would have bought me my first lap dance in Vegas. He would have taught me to play craps at a table. We would have bonded. I grew up to love Vegas and gambling on my own. But when I hold a chip in my hands from the 1970s, I wonder if he ever gambled with it.

But I never would have even begun to collect if my wife hadn’t noticed the way I looked at chips and over-paid by a lot to buy me 4 chips that she knew would mean something to me. She awakened all of the above. And that is one more in an ever-growing list of reasons I love her.

I look at values to avoid being ripped-off on a drunken bidding binge. But when I buy, it’s because it moves me.

I have no illusions that this is earth-shattering to anyone. These are just my drunken thoughts this evening.