Hi Dan! A few comments...

Is it true that we have no newer collectors or collectors with limited funds that rely on trading to build larger collections?

I'm something of a seasoned collector of playable chip sets, but am relatively new to collecting individual chips. So there's at least one! That being said, I very, very rarely trade, and would even less often consider a trade to help build my collection.

One of the challenges of being a newer collector approaching trading is that I don't have anything qualitatively or quantitatively to trade. The only way to get inventory is to have it given to you or buy it, and if I buy it, I generally want it for my personal collection. The only way I see parlaying my collection into something bigger is if I have one semi-valuable chip that I trade for 10-20 newer, common, or average condition chips. And while that's possible, chances are I can acquire those same chips I'd be trading for cheaper/easier than I could the one semi-valuable chip I'm trading away (that was also part of my personal collection to begin with). In short, I suspect newer collectors simply don't have inventory they want to trade, and can build their sets more cheaply/easily through buying rather than trading.

Regardless of inventory, though, I'm not keen on trading in general for a number of reasons...

- Digital formats distort (to varying degrees) what the chips look like. Many people on the site use scanners to display their chips digitally. Unfortunately a lot of scanners don't pick up reds and pinks very well (and slightly distort other colors) so I can't always have confidence in the colors I'm seeing. You could use photographs instead, but the quality of the image and the white-balancing can still throw the colors and sharpness off. And even if someone uses a great color scanner to represent their items, there's still the possibility that your monitor isn't calibrated correctly to display them.

- Sometimes it's hard to assess the condition of the chip from scans/pictures. This, combined with the reason above, causes me to generally only want to trade when I can see the actual chips in front of my own eyeballs. The other party's description could be spot on, but I still greatly prefer to see chips with my own eyes if I can.

- For me, trading means investing a couple hundred dollars into a scanner, and then investing the time to scan them. The benefits of trading don't make up for this investment for me. Maybe one day, but not yet. I'd do it to sell chips, although I haven't gotten to that point yet. Alternatively, it means taking proper photos which would take even more of my time. When I do decide to take good photos of my chips, it's usually a 6-10 hour commitment and I only do that about 2-4 times per year (and even then it's typically only for displaying my sets, calendar photos, and other such purposes).

- Differences in valuation. Some folks value their chips differently than others, and sometimes those differences are very dramatic. When trading, you're literally making an offer and some folks are offended by low-ball offers. The thing is, I'm new enough that I'll rarely know what a lowball offer is. And who's to say what fair offer is, anyway? For Nevada chips we have The Chip Rack. For chips from the Midwest, AC, and Mississippi Delta region, and Colorado we have Campiglia & Wells' price guide. But as far as I know, that guide was last updated in 2009 so the data contained therein is about 8 years old, and it doesn't offer data for California, Washington, Montana, AZ, and others. For everything else I suppose you could use eBay, but that can be hit or miss. All that adds up to say I couldn't tell you what my chips are worth, and I'd have no better idea of what your chips are worth. I prefer buying because at least someone has said, "I'll sell this to you for X," and I can make a decision on whether it's worth X to me.

- By my estimation, trading requires you to obtain inventory that you don't want, and there's no guarantee someone else will. That often requires expendable income, and if I have that, I'd rather just buy what I want.

- Shipping. I hate packaging items and shipping them, and even moreso when I can't replace the items I'm sending in case they get lost or damaged. But yes, I dislike the process of shipping items out so much that if all the other reasons I've already listed were eliminated or mitigated, this alone would still keep me from trading very often.

With all that said, I will still have some trade inventory available at this year's convention, and I look forward to the various trading sessions just to see what swaps I can make, if any. I suspect the trades I make will be limited, though, and my leftover trade inventory I'll probably just package up and see if I can sell them at low cost. The exception to that would be with snappers where I might have some inventory which newer collectors may not have obtained yet. In general, though, I'd rather buy what I want, and sell what I don't.