Partial racks less valuable? (2 Viewers)

DrStrange

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Let's say we have a full rack of chips worth $100 or $1 per chip.

We lose one chip so now we have a 99 chip partial rack. These are unique chips, you can not get a single chips replacement.

What value does the 99 chip partial have? Is it worth $1 per chip time 99 chips equals $99? Or do we diminish the value past the nominal value of the single missing chip?

DrStrange
 
Interesting.. I would say it would be somewhat diminished at around 80% value IMO.
I think those who have chip OCD would pass on this with the missing chip.... Or offer about 70-80 dollars for the 99 chips.
 
for me personally it would depend significantly on the demon in question. if it were an upper denom ($25 or $100), i would have less of an issue because i feel comfortable having partial racks to be filled in with the neighboring denom. if a lower denom (frac through $5), i would have a harder time with it.

i think more than it diminishing my interest in the rack specifically, it would discourage me from attempting to put the set together at all. i guess if i were forced to quantify the diminished price, i would be willing to pay approximately 70% of the full rack price if an upper denom and 30% if a lower denom.
 
for me personally it would depend significantly on the demon in question. if it were an upper denom ($25 or $100), i would have less of an issue because i feel comfortable having partial racks to be filled in with the neighboring denom. if a lower denom (frac through $5), i would have a harder time with it.

Agreed, although I'd still want to have the higher denom chips in even barrels.

i think more than it diminishing my interest in the rack specifically, it would discourage me from attempting to put the set together at all. i guess if i were forced to quantify the diminished price, i would be willing to pay approximately 70% of the full rack price if an upper denom and 30% if a lower denom.

I think if I had to quantify it, it wouldn't quite that extreme (unless I misunderstood you). Were you saying that for a rack of lower denom chips that you'd be willing to pay $200/rack for that you'd only pay $60 for 99 chips?

I was thinking around 80% of the full rack value. In my mind it would be paying for 4 complete barrels at the market price and getting 19 spares for free. But if not having a full rack was really going to eat away at someone, I wouldn't blame them for not wanting to pay 80%.
 
I think it's still good for about $90-$95, IF you can find someone willing to deal with the "incomplete" rack at all - it definitely makes it harder to sell. It depends - I can't think of any chips offhand that are THAT irreplaceable that you can't find ONE chip. If there were, I bet people would still be willing to deal with the 99-chip rack, at a reasonable discount.
 
I think if I had to quantify it, it wouldn't quite that extreme (unless I misunderstood you). Were you saying that for a rack of lower denom chips that you'd be willing to pay $200/rack for that you'd only pay $60 for 99 chips?

Yeah that's what I meant. I don't mean that the seller shouldn't expect to get more, only that that's the amount they'd be worth to me personally. But that more reflects the degree to which my interest would be discourage by virtue of the missing chip.
 
Yeah that's what I meant. I don't mean that the seller shouldn't expect to get more, only that that's the amount they'd be worth to me personally. But that more reflects the degree to which my interest would be discourage by virtue of the missing chip.

Gotcha. For me personally it would greatly depend on the particular chip, how much I wanted it and the prospect of finding a chip down the road to fill the rack.

I guess I answered the question as if I were the seller, which is to say I would expect/try to get at least 80% of the full rack value.
 
Part it into 5-20 chips each and throw on eBay for 3 times the price :cool:

^ I am not really serious but people do that
 
Let's say we have a full rack of chips worth $100 or $1 per chip.

We lose one chip so now we have a 99 chip partial rack. These are unique chips, you can not get a single chips replacement.

What value does the 99 chip partial have? Is it worth $1 per chip time 99 chips equals $99? Or do we diminish the value past the nominal value of the single missing chip?

DrStrange

Interesting. Speculating with hypothetical numbers...

For chips that would sell for $100 a rack, the nominal price may be $1 per chips... but sales seem to imply that's only true for the per-rack price.
These same chips might sell for $25 a barrel (nominal $1.25).
And sell for $1.50 for singles.

If you have 99 instead of 100 chips, you seem to lose the rack buyers - those interested in having a full rack (even the comments in this thread suggest that.)
But you can still (theoretically) sell four barrels at $25 each for $100... and then maybe sell the singles, as well. So although you've likely lost the full-rack sale (or any full rack buyer would be likely to want a sharp discount), you don't really lose even $1 of overall value, unless the chip design/denom/rarity also means that you're unlikely to find buyers by the barrel.

So if it's 99 absolutely unique $1 chips, you may have lost a fair mount of value (probably nobody is building sets with 20 singles). But if it's 99 unique but beautiful hundos, it may have just pushed you into parting it out at a greater value.
 
depends on the rack, if the missing chips are hard to find then yes, its less valuable. if the missing chips are in large quantities, then its a non factor
 
I think you need to clarify what you mean by unique...

I interpreted the OP as if he were talking about Custom Chips... Unique design, Irreplaceable if the manufacturer no longer services the home market (but still only worth about $1), then yes, I would anticipate a significant drop in value for the price of the rack.

If you are talking about a Unique collectible chip or Casino chip, then I don't see any real loss in value for the rack, and as others pointed out you could sell lesser quantities for a higher amount.
 
I think you need to clarify what you mean by unique...

I interpreted the OP as if he were talking about Custom Chips... Unique design, Irreplaceable if the manufacturer no longer services the home market (but still only worth about $1), then yes, I would anticipate a significant drop in value for the price of the rack.

If you are talking about a Unique collectible chip or Casino chip, then I don't see any real loss in value for the rack, and as others pointed out you could sell lesser quantities for a higher amount.

this is a good point and i think it sort of invalidates this thought experiment from a practical perspective. but applying to custom chips (say of the BCC or TRK variety where new chips are truly and permanently unavailable), it stands. atypical maybe, but i see if in eBay auctions with some regularity where you'll see a hotstamped set of paulsons from back in the day with 99 to a rack. would drive me crazy.
 
a hotstamped set of paulsons from back in the day with 99 to a rack. would drive me crazy.

As someone with 199 older Paulson hotstamps (starburst on one side, "$1.00" on the other), I can confirm that the missing chip does in fact drive me crazy.
 
So, let's tinker with the situation.

You buy a rack on eBay and one chip is missing / destroyed when the chips arrive. How much is the damage claim?

If a single can be purchased, is the claim the replacement cost plus shipping?

If replacement chips aren't an option, then how much?

DrStrange

PS on a side bar, selling a rack at once is different than parting it out in 100 single chip sales or in five 20 chip sales. Those smaller packages can take a long, long time to sell. Look at the sales histories of auctions. It could easily take five + years to sell a rack maybe a lot longer. Plus there is friction for the seller making 100 trips to the post office, packaging 100 orders etc. No doubt eBay fees would be higher too. I might well take $100 today rather than jumping through the hoops to get $6/month for five years.
 
If a single can be purchased, is the claim the replacement cost plus shipping?

I think this is the only easy one to answer... I say: if it's replaceable, the seller should replace it, or credit you the funds necessary to immediately Buy It Now (shipping included.) This is what it cost to make you whole on the order.

If that's not an option... argh.

On the "friciton" of parting - agreed. That is, of course, part of why the prices are higher, but is not the whole story, either. No easy answers, I think. But an interesting thread.
 
So, let's tinker with the situation.

You buy a rack on eBay and one chip is missing / destroyed when the chips arrive. How much is the damage claim?

If a single can be purchased, is the claim the replacement cost plus shipping?

If replacement chips aren't an option, then how much?

with respect, this is a totally different question than was posed in the OP. if i total the '55 chevy truck my grandfather restored before his death, Geico is going to give me book value. if someone offered me triple book value today i would laugh in their face. the value that an adjuster would assign to a specialty/collectible item is not helpful in determining the value to an individual collector.
 
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eBay buyers have considerably more power than someone negotiating with Geico. Insurance claims are somewhat one sided for a host of reasons that do not come into play with eBay auctions.

The buyer of an eBay auction can often coerce the seller to strike a deal or refund the purchase price when the seller doesn't deliver the items as listed if the buyer chooses to press the matter. The amount of money is negotiable, but I would certainly prefer to be playing the buyer's side of the table than the sellers.

DrStrange

PS what actually came in was something I haven't seen before. The package was $2.18 postage due because they shipped in a priority mail box but put on postage for parcel post. And there was one more $500 chip than advertised. No damage to the chips or case. I am inclined to just call it even.
 
I think it's still good for about $90-$95, IF you can find someone willing to deal with the "incomplete" rack at all - it definitely makes it harder to sell. It depends - I can't think of any chips offhand that are THAT irreplaceable that you can't find ONE chip. If there were, I bet people would still be willing to deal with the 99-chip rack, at a reasonable discount.

I agree with Ben. I would believe that I could eventually get a replacement chip at some point, so for me they retain their value. Although I realize that is changing the premise of the OP. In fact, after a few instances of a chip getting dropped on the floor and one of my dogs swooping in like Flash Gordon and quickly eating said chip, I have taken to buying one extra chip of each denom for back up.

JT
 

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