Thanks for pointing this out. As a card-carrying member of the hobby gaming/tabletop gaming community, I find this quite interesting, and I think both your take and the pledgers/project organizer's perspective to be quite valid.
From a pure chipper's perspective, the cost per chip on these sets and the breakdown thereof isn't very competitive at all, particularly for a design not your own. You could get Laurel Crowns for significantly cheaper, and even make your own set for a little cheaper (assuming you wanted at least 25/denom via Old West, et. al.) than the net price per chip you have listed above.
From a non-chipping board gamer's perspective, there are some niches that these chips could fill where buying 25+ chips/denom isn't necessary or doesn't make sense. Sure, you could get a few friends together who were like-minded, but for an order like this, that's not terribly likely, and that would require that they actually are care enough to do the research to know that there are outlets available to them, and that one of them can provide the art in the appropriate format. What's most interesting to me is there were actually 115 gamers (who, FWIW, tend to be very passionate about their likes and opinions) that bought into a single chip design. Considering that it's sometimes difficult to get 6 or more gamers to agree on even what game(s) to play at a game night or what set of rules to use, finding 115 agreeable folk is quite the accomplishment in and of itself. Take a little off the top as an organizer's/finder's fee for the trouble, and the price per chip isn't actually all that terrible.
It should also be understood that hobby gamers are frequently willing to shell out considerable money just for customizable box inserts to organize their game a little better, to the tune of $35-$50 per game. Getting a set of chips for $100-$200 that works for multiple games would be seen as quite the legitimate purchase at a not-unreasonable price.
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I emailed them to see if they would divulge their manufacturer. Just curious who they used.
