How odd that you would think that. Most of the people here collect chips, and they play with those chips. They share their chips in the poker chip's natural environment - on the felt.
The hobby is far from "kept in the dark". Most of my players don't care which chips I use, but I merrily tell them all about the chips that I bring out. I share my hobby quite a bit - it's not my fault that most people are normal and thus, don't care.
Most of the people here aren't concerned about increasing the value of our chips. In fact, there are numerous threads where the discussion is about crazy inflated prices. When Jim releases chips to us for a discount, we love to buy them up - not to resell, but to have yet another set to put into rotation at our home games. When someone picks up an epic looking set, that set is often requested to make an appearance at a meet-up, where once again those chips are put into play.
Many sets are built a little bit at a time. It is a time consuming labor of love. Sometimes those sets never get completed, and so the Classified section becomes active as people buy-sell-trade to get the funds or chips to complete a dream set, or to help someone else complete their dream set.
I can only think you are viewing chip collecting from the point of view of a coin collector. Those people don't intend to use their coins. They simply collect, and sometime sell, hoping the value goes up over time.
Chip collectors are a different breed. We are both classified as numismatics, but the comparison ends pretty quickly - for the vast majority of us.
