I believe that set chipping has certainly affected the Single chipping hobby. Chips that they are looking for a single that aren't really that rare bringing high dollars as they are locked up in coveted sets and rare chips, yes lets say it, like the Cotton Clubs, that there were 2000 known to be made but not "set obtainable" has a 100 chip find and certain singles collectors loosing their minds saying they have gone from 1000-1500 down to $50 while an Eddies fabulous '50's 100 or 500 sell for 30-50 and they're replicas!!
Mapes $100's another example, 200 a chip? maybe, but then a hoard found, and the offer is $50 for a minute, they're sold to Beverly Hills and aren't seen for a long time...... Bang... back to 200. Wait, there's racks out there!!!!!
I don't fault Krish for hoarding so many seemingly rare chips one bit as I too am a set collector but I do fault the market for falling to the fact that he over paid for so many chips and the "community", (I just saw the comment at PCF) "Waiting on offer from Windwalker" to extract maximum pain knowing he would pay. In such a small hobby one guy with what equates to an endless budget who can simply out spend anyone for "all the good stuff" caused a massive chip bubble, and in my opinion, proliferated the price points of the NAGB chips. (A whole other discussion), The NAGB's have become simply replicas of most of Krish's chips and folks are paying 6 (Rarely) up to 30 a chip for what we know are $2.20 to $3.70 from Paulson/GPI also seen in a now scrubbed thread at PCF from a casino executive exposing GPI pricing. Again a topic for a whole other thread, why does the sets community want to keep GPI pricing so secret?? Beer distributors clear 3-15 a case on beer from what they pay from the brewery after all expenses! (Beer drinkers don't have a secret society to keep brewery prices secret)
I say there's a box of rare chips in every garage around the country and "investing" in chips is a slippery slope to say the least.
To your point, to build a classic set of classic chips only gets harder every day, there's so many on the hunt to build sets of rarer, actual casino chips it has become quite hard. Now, the morbid thought
STuDioSuRFiNG brought up of Krish having some health event suddenly (GOD FORBID) IS an impacting force to a small hobby.
Paying $20 for a chip that was mass produced at GPI, Simply dumb IMO. But then some say that my Starlites shouldn't be $7 because they feel they know what I paid! The difference? there was only 18K of those 1990's leaded TRK's, Ken pricing on mass production GOOD, Ken pricing on old school leaded TRK's BAD........ Pay 1500 for a rare chip to a collector we love...... GOOD, oh, he got them? ADJUST THE PRICE GUIDE!!!!! Interesting personalities in our little hobby to say the least. The few with big money and influence control what the masses will obtain and pay, much like the artificially rare NAGB Chips.
Pay what you want for what you like, just know and don't be pissy when you cant recover that investment later on which as we see in the PCF classifieds, ebay, chip chat auctions etc. etc. is almost always the case. Someone joked, Stock Market, buy low sell high, chip set collecting, Buy high sell low!!!
I could go on............. Collect what you like, your way. Start project, give up, sell off, repeat. but to buy chips as an "Investment"? , BUY GOLD AND SILVER not chips!
There's a reason every ebay sale goes........ See chip, contact seller, "Hello sir, do you have any moooooore of these."?
I'd love for
Steven Cutler to chime in on this subject!
Chip on, great topic and I assume there's MANY opinions on how hard it is to compile a set of classics and even more opinions on pricing and buying theories!!
I’d be willing to bet those chips are rigged to self destruct in the event of something like that. 
