No, you are right...there is something ridiculous about this all...
I own a 3 table tourney set but never hosted more then 1 table....and own more sets then we could use in a year without using one twice.
Still, do you know someone that bought Paulsons or other clay chips, holds on to them for 5 years and sells them at a loss ?
I come from a time that it was hard to convince yourself to pay up to 1 or 1.5/chip.
Why, because there were so many options were out there...
TRK, ASM,
BCC, group buys & vendor lines (
TRK,
BCC, Paulson, ASM) and TCR sales.
Now we only have
CPC left (for clay), TCR sales and what is for sale here &
eBay.
Since
TRK are beyond most members budget and there are not that many good
BCC sets out there...not much left besides Paulsons.
The community today is ten-fold what is was back then (members & buying power)
Can you imagine if there were no more TCR sales ?