How does one get informed of casinos selling off their chips? (1 Viewer)

Look up 'harvesting', because that's as close as most of us are ever gonna get.

Otherwise, set up a company and retain a lawyer. But you'd be in direct competition with several vendor entities here, and they aren't going to give away their trade secrets for free.

But, one can always dream. Sometimes lightning strikes where you need it to. Good luck!
 
Look up 'harvesting', because that's as close as most of us are ever gonna get.

Otherwise, set up a company and retain a lawyer. But you'd be in direct competition with several vendor entities here, and they aren't going to give away their trade secrets for free.

But, one can always dream. Sometimes lightning strikes where you need it to. Good luck!

How many people have had access to these auctions?
I’ve emailed a few casinos who announced closure (in states that have historically been allowed to sell old stock), called different contacts and it seems like getting a response is a near impossibility.
 
Casinos that are going out of business or replacing their chips are VERY unlikely to sell off small lots to individuals. As mentioned above, there are people/companies that specialize in this, have the resources to buy the entire lot in one go, and have the experience to navigate the legalities involved. If you were a casino operator, who would you rather deal with?
 
@TheChipRoom is the king of this information and he isn’t going to give it out. It’s how he makes his living, or at least a very lucrative side hustle. And he’s been doing it most of this century. He probably has contacts we can’t imagine. Luckily for us he sells them to us at reasonable prices.

And my guess, even if you found a casino willing to sell to you that they aren’t going to sell you the quantity you want. They will sell them all in one lot when they close or rebrand.

But watch the site, Jim always announces when he’s acquiring more chips. We spend a week trying to figure out which chips he is getting. Then he will announce a sale and you can hop in and buy what you want. But be fast, they sell out quick.

Good luck and welcome to the forum.
 
A good vendor here finds them and sells them to members at reasonable prices.
Then, members re-sell them to other members, often at unreasonable prices.
Lets change this just slightly:

A good vendor here finds them and sells them to members here at what prices the members will pay. Members then turn around and sell at even more unreasonable prices to other members.
 
Lets change this just slightly:

A good vendor here finds them and sells them to members here at what prices the members will pay. Members then turn around and sell at even more unreasonable prices to other members.
...which (unreasonable prices) they will still pay.

The whole "laboratory" theory of Supply and Demand has never existed in reality.
Demand has always been inelastic, to some degree (fully inelastic for food and fuel, of course).

Supply has always dominated Demand. Either people need (or just want) something, or they don't.
Even in the most niche cases (like normally useless clay discs) the one who has them dictates the terms, if others need/want them.
 
...which (unreasonable prices) they will still pay.
I was going to add that in there, but the sentence got too long so I just left it out. In any case, you are 100% correct about the "they will still pay" part.

The other part, I'm not so sure I totally agree. What you say is true, but at the same time buyers have free will too. People could choose to buy/substitute perfectly good and perfectly usable chips for $1/chip or even $2/chip and refuse to pay $10 or $15 or in some cases even $75-$100/chip. Personally do not get it at all (the part of paying 10x or 20x for some small perceived added benefit). I am not someone that has unlimited funds so maybe I will never get it. Good for those that do, I say. Unfortunately it does tend to lock some of us out, but I guess that is just the penalty for being poor....
 
Casinos that are going out of business or replacing their chips are VERY unlikely to sell off small lots to individuals. As mentioned above, there are people/companies that specialize in this, have the resources to buy the entire lot in one go, and have the experience to navigate the legalities involved. If you were a casino operator, who would you rather deal with?



I’m not saying they should make special considerations or sell in small lots - I was clear in the email that I wanted to bid on the entire stock, and there are large vendors that also don’t seem to be able to participate on these auctions. Seems unlikely this is because they couldn’t be bothered to talk to their lawyer. If the admin staff for the casino who receive these emails was actually interested in representing the interests of the company they’re acting as a fiduciary for, they would be obliged to spend a few seconds at least pointing would be bidders in the right direction. Considering the amount of money in play here and how all attempts are communication have been stonewalled, I don’t think it’s crazy to think there’s something more to it than people “not putting in the work”.

I really can’t complain because in all likelihood I’d be priced out of an open auction, and the person who won would charge much higher prices than jim does. Jim effectively sprinkles the benefit on all of us so we all should be happy this is happening. I have a feeling if someone other than Jim was getting priority access to these auctions and selling them at less generous prices people would not be so willing to look the other way.
 
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A good vendor here finds them and sells them to members at reasonable prices.
Then, members re-sell them to other members, often at unreasonable prices.
giphy.webp
 
I was going to add that in there, but the sentence got too long so I just left it out. In any case, you are 100% correct about the "they will still pay" part.

The other part, I'm not so sure I totally agree. What you say is true, but at the same time buyers have free will too. People could choose to buy/substitute perfectly good and perfectly usable chips for $1/chip or even $2/chip and refuse to pay $10 or $15 or in some cases even $75-$100/chip. Personally do not get it at all (the part of paying 10x or 20x for some small perceived added benefit). I am not someone that has unlimited funds so maybe I will never get it. Good for those that do, I say. Unfortunately it does tend to lock some of us out, but I guess that is just the penalty for being poor....

People spend millions on other forms of collectables, art, etc. Utility is a concept that gets flushed down the toilet.
 
Here is what I will do... I will marry a women of Native American heritage... I will convince her to help me open as small a casino operation as Paulson's threshold for acknowledgment will satisfy... Then my friends... Then... Get ready for deals or something.

Thank you for the welcome to this interesting pocket of the internet.
 
Put yourself in the shoes of someone making the decision. Maybe it is the Director of Casino operations.... Now the company that you work for just got sold or for some other reason the decision to replace the chips with something different has been made. Of course this is all just ballpark, but go with me for a second as I do have a point.

Lets say you work at a rather modest Casino/Card room & just for argument sake lets say 500 people/day walk through your doors and each drops on average $100. That is $5000/day x 365 days = $1,825,000. For a cardroom 30 tables with enough chips for every table to be full with 9 players all with 2 racks. 30 tables * 9 players/ table * 200 chips/player * 2 just because and you have a total rack of roughly 100,000 chips. Maybe half that of tournament chips and lets just call it 150,000 chips. I really don't know the exact numbers, but lets say Jim buys them all for 30¢ ea that would be $45,000 that the casino gets to recoup. It is basically like free money to the casino as all of that has likely already been depreciated AND paid for itself many times over many years. How much extra do you really think opening it up to others would bring? Another 10%, 20%? Again, lets do the math: $45,000 * 10% extra is only an extra $4,500. How much time do you really think the Director of Casino Operations really wants to spend to recoup an extra $4,500 when it does not personally benefit him one bit?

I think putting yourself in that position most everyone would come to the same conclusion: Sell to someone that has done it before and be done with it.
 
oh,
I kind of forgot my point of going through the math: Extra Revenue/Revenue = $4,500/$1,825,000 = .002465 so what ever work you would go through would only get you 2 tenths of a percent gain on your gross revenue. Not hardly worth spending any time at all on. Conclusion for me would be to dump the damn things as quickly and painlessly as possible
 
Here is what I will do... I will marry a women of Native American heritage... I will convince her to help me open as small a casino operation as Paulson's threshold for acknowledgment will satisfy... Then my friends... Then... Get ready for deals or something.

Thank you for the welcome to this interesting pocket of the internet.
Already been done here (well, kinda...).

Paulson is on to our schemes. :ROFL: :ROFLMAO:
 
I’m not saying they should make special considerations or sell in small lots - I was clear in the email that I wanted to bid on the entire stock, and there are large vendors that also don’t seem to be able to participate on these auctions. Seems unlikely this is because they couldn’t be bothered to talk to their lawyer. If the admin staff for the casino who receive these emails was actually interested in representing the interests of the company they’re acting as a fiduciary for, they would be obliged to spend a few seconds at least pointing would be bidders in the right direction. Considering the amount of money in play here and how all attempts are communication have been stonewalled, I don’t think it’s crazy to think there’s something more to it than people “not putting in the work”.

I really can’t complain because in all likelihood I’d be priced out of an open auction, and the person who won would charge much higher prices than jim does. Jim effectively sprinkles the benefit on all of us so we all should be happy this is happening. I have a feeling if someone other than Jim was getting priority access to these auctions and selling them at less generous prices people would not be so willing to look the other way.
Just a guess here. Wondering if the “in” is with the auction houses, not the casinos.

When liquidating, they hire/outsource it to another firm to manage. So the casino itself doesn’t want to be bothered, or contractually/legally must be arms length.

I’d start researching auction houses if I really wanted to get in on the game.
 
I was going to add that in there, but the sentence got too long so I just left it out. In any case, you are 100% correct about the "they will still pay" part.

The other part, I'm not so sure I totally agree. What you say is true, but at the same time buyers have free will too. People could choose to buy/substitute perfectly good and perfectly usable chips for $1/chip or even $2/chip and refuse to pay $10 or $15 or in some cases even $75-$100/chip. Personally do not get it at all (the part of paying 10x or 20x for some small perceived added benefit). I am not someone that has unlimited funds so maybe I will never get it. Good for those that do, I say. Unfortunately it does tend to lock some of us out, but I guess that is just the penalty for being poor....
Sure, a 5K bottle of wine is NOT 100 times better, or even 10 times better, than a $50 bottle of wine.
It's a matter of fashion, hype, and lack of knowledge among those who wanna have "the best".
When you only have $50 to spend on wine, you have to be a connoiseur and know what you really like, in order to not become a fashion victim and extract maximum value for given money.

If I were less poor, I would probably have more Paulsons.
My relative poverty, though, made me find a way to create chips nicer than many, if not most, Paulsons (IMHO).

I stand firm on my statement on the inelasticity of Demand, though.
 
I buy 1-2 bottles of wine a week and never pay more than $10/bottle. @$50/bottle my demand for wine is 0 bottles/year.

According to my math, my demand for wine changes based on what price I can buy it for. If no one was willing to pay $500, or $5k for that matter, for a bottle of wine, there would be 0 wineries making $500$5k bottles of wine, right? I must be thinking about this wrong, at least in your mind. I don't get it.
 
I’m not saying they should make special considerations or sell in small lots - I was clear in the email that I wanted to bid on the entire stock, and there are large vendors that also don’t seem to be able to participate on these auctions. Seems unlikely this is because they couldn’t be bothered to talk to their lawyer. If the admin staff for the casino who receive these emails was actually interested in representing the interests of the company they’re acting as a fiduciary for, they would be obliged to spend a few seconds at least pointing would be bidders in the right direction. Considering the amount of money in play here and how all attempts are communication have been stonewalled, I don’t think it’s crazy to think there’s something more to it than people “not putting in the work”.

I really can’t complain because in all likelihood I’d be priced out of an open auction, and the person who won would charge much higher prices than jim does. Jim effectively sprinkles the benefit on all of us so we all should be happy this is happening. I have a feeling if someone other than Jim was getting priority access to these auctions and selling them at less generous prices people would not be so willing to look the other way.
Maybe it's because you emailed them from coolguy69@yahoo.com?
 
@Nanook
There is a winery in France that makes excellent wine. Its production volume is very limited and given.
Thousands of rich people around the world have known about that, and they 're not necessarily enough "into wine", in order to find some alternative.
The Supply can screw them by charging 5K a bottle, which is fine if it is fine with those who pay.

It's not fine if done with goods necessary for survival, or among people who pretend to be a "community".
 
I buy 1-2 bottles of wine a week and never pay more than $10/bottle. @$50/bottle my demand for wine is 0 bottles/year.
Once a year you should treat yourself to a nice bottle of Vueve Cliqoit. So worth it at around $50. It’s my Xmas eve treat after presents are wrapped.
 
Re: nanook

Why frame it in terms of annual gross revenue? In those terms every transaction is a blip. Why open a blackjack table today? It only represents a thousandth of a percent of annual revenue.

And we’re not talking about the difference between 30c and 33c - we all know how much these things sell for.

Just a guess here. Wondering if the “in” is with the auction houses, not the casinos.

When liquidating, they hire/outsource it to another firm to manage. So the casino itself doesn’t want to be bothered, or contractually/legally must be arms length.

I’d start researching auction houses if I really wanted to get in on the game.

I sub to many and get alerts based on relevancy. I have never seen old stock sold in this manner. I’ve seen several casinos liquidating their equipment but chips? Never - even though they’re from states that can sell old stock. Tables and gaming equipment are also rarely offered so there’s probably more to it. Figuring out what that is… :unsure: .., that’s what this thread is about.
 

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