Mike; Ponder this thought for a moment. When a typical new chip is released in Atlantic City ... I can pretty much tell in advance who will be present at the release ... a couple dozen people at most. When a casino like Trump Marina issues a very limited number of chips as they did with the recent A.C. 150th Anniversary sets ... a large crowd shows up ... as did for the recent Showboat New Year 2005 chips last weekend that were completely sold out in 15-20 minutes.

Question; What benefit does a casino derive from issuing such very small numbers of chips?
It can't be the profit factor ... as they would have made much more profit had they made more chips to sell instead of selling out a small number of chips in 10 - 15 minutes.

Answer: It has absolutely nothing to do with selling chips! It's a promotional tool in order to encourage people to come to their property.... no different than offering a gift of the month, but to a different demographic group of customers.

In addition to that consideration ... the local newspaper picks up on the story and runs a photo on the front page of the Local News section ... which exposes even more people to the hobby outside of the current collectors. THAT is what grows the hobby.

Everytime there is publicity about chip collecting ... and alot of it revolves around Limited Editions (LE's) that's good for the hobby in spite of the occassional b*tch or two that is posted on thechipboard.