thanks for the good tips so far (keep any others coming!). Yes, I was surprised that Luxor had a problem with me buying (2) $1 chips. Many places the cahsier was very nice and they would even go off to hunt down some really nice chips. I did notice a few places were smart and had some in racks back on a table or in a cabinet that were uncirculated just for selling to collectors.

My guess is that a casino pays maybe around $0.15, if that even, per chip for regular issue chips and I'm sure a little higher for the 1000 qty limited chips(which is why I beat the limited ones are usually $5 or high denoms, plus the extra profit these will bring in). If it was my casino i would sell people chips all day long and as anyone near the chip collecting business knows that is pretty much what Hard Rock, Palms and a few others do with all their various collector chips. Its easy cheap money for them to sell off a chip with a 5x or much higher return on their money.