It's come to my attention we need a serious discussion on the value of chips. (If you're negotiating with someone regarding buying chips from them, use talking points from this thread.)

Okay. It's time for another one of those MewtwoStruckBack Old Man Rants. This one should help those of you are looking to buy chips in quantity. No, I'm not giving out coupons in this thread you lazy fucks. This thread is going to replace the "Best ways to purchase chips" link in the sidebar once I have everything finalized.

Many people are buying chips from others rather than D&B. I'm not going to get into much of the ethical bits here, beyond saying D&B can void cards they can prove have transferred ownership per their terms of service, though it's not common for that to happen, and just as there are white-hat APs and black-hat APs, there are white-hat sellers (those who got given game cards, those who want out of the game, those who have party/event overflow they have no plans on spending themselves and want to recoup some of what they spent) and black-hat sellers (employees/managers loading cards on their back end and then selling those cards). I'm going to assume for the purposes of this thread we're dealing with a legitimate third party.

I'm seeing way too many people ask for way too much for chips on eBay, Amazon, and other places as well. A lot of this boils down to the fact that everyone seems to have a different idea of what a chip or batch of chips is worth. That problem is what this thread is looking to solve.

First off...what should the base value of a chip be considered? Dave & Buster's sells chips at various rates, from $5 for 24 chips all the way up to $100 for 750 chips, with and without Supercharges. But we're looking at the coupon value here, as that should be considered the basic standard - a "buy $20 get $20". These are commonly available in many formats. If you don't have a $20/$20, you're not trying hard enough. They're out there. That gets you 200 chips for $20. So if you're an eBay seller listing a card with 100 chips on it and saying "$20 value!" - no. No, it's not. No one who goes to D&B more than once or twice is paying that rate, so you need to stop advertising it as such.

"But does that mean that chips are worth 10 cents each as a final cost? So that guy on eBay selling 1,000 chips for $90 is a good deal then?"

Not exactly. While someone selling at such a rate would be good in theory, that's ignoring SO MANY other factors that go into buying chips directly from D&B that lower the player's net cost.

First - the rewards program. When you spend $100 in D&B, whether it be arcade play, food, alcohol (so long as $5.29 or more worth of food is on the same check), pool...you get 48 chips posted to your card. So if you were to use five buy $20 get $20 coupons, you would not only get 1,000 chips, but 48 extra chips, totaling 1,048.

Now some stores allow one coupon per card per day, some do one coupon per person per day. The stores following the latter standard may rate-limit what you can load for. Also, the stores are under immense pressure to get "Supercharges" even on coupon transactions, which would mean spending $26 for 250 chips - you lose out on a dollar here, but often staff that would hold you to the one per day standard on normal loads will allow one per card if you Supercharge, as this increases their success rate for Supercharging and makes them look better / enters them into in-house contests and giveaways they have based on Supercharge rate. (Yes, every time I load my card I look behind the desk at D&B's literature. I see this stuff. It's something to be aware of because knowing about this practice may benefit you as a player long-term...) But it's also possible to just get a bunch of phone numbers tied to D&B apps and use the in-app offers of buy 20 get 20, which don't include that same pressure to Supercharge. So if you're negotiating with a chip seller, you should be doing it from the $100 for 1,048 figure that would not include Supercharges, not $104 for 1,048.

But that's not the end of it.

As you should know, there is the 2-For Tuesday promo that gives you 2 free plays on any card load $10 or more done on a Tuesday. Assuming those five buy 20 get 20s are done on Tuesday, that grants 10 free plays. Most AP games, with limited exceptions, are 6.8 chips, so you can assume you would get an additional 68 chips in value here. That moves the needle to $100 for 1,116 chips.

That's the end of your in-D&B adjustments, but what about rewards based on how you pay and where?

In my area, D&B gift cards are sold get Giant Eagle and GetGo. Why is this significant? When you buy a gift card there, you get 10 cents off per gallon, up to 30 gallons, for every $50 spent. (Sometimes there are promos that double this.) If you're APing the gas fill, you should be getting every drop of the 30 gallons, with gas cans to max out what won't fit in your car. That means on your $100 spend above, you are getting back 20 cent * 30 gallons = $6 worth of gas. This reduces your actual spend to $94 (or $88 if they are running the double promo!)

On top of THAT, there are many credit cards that give 4% back on purchses made as gas stations. If purchasing the gift card from GetGo, that goes under the fuel discount program, but ALSO classes as a gas station purchase! This gets you another $4 back on your initial outlay, which means you are now down to $90 for 1,116 chips without the double perks promo (and $84 with.) $90 for 1,116 chips works out to 8.0645 cents per chip. (And the double perks rate works out to 7.526 cents per chip.)

So if you are negotiating with a chip seller, off of commonly available chip rates you can get every day, at the very worst the seller should be beating 8.0645 cents per chip - and that's just to MEET what you're doing now, let alone beating it.

Those who were here during the 2018 holiday season will remember, and hopefully got in with, the Cashstar D&B promo. During this time, purchasing a gift card on the site, when going through the targeted ad link, granted a "$20" voucher for every $20 in gift card value, up to a maximum of $100 per payment card. (It would lock out additional purchases on the same card.) Now those free vouchers weren't really "$20", but were 100 chips...but they also included the card activation fee. At the point of the promotion that was $2 and granted an extra 10 chips. These vouchers were also usable on Tuesday for 2-for Tuesday. They were also compatible with the buy 20 get 20, as these e-gift cards could be used on anything just like a regular gift card. So for your $100 spend, you got your 5 20/20s (1,000), your rewards chips (48), your five free 110 chip vouchers (550), the 5x2=10 free plays for Tuesday loads on the paid for 20/20s (68 chips in value), and 5x2=10 MORE free plays from the 110 chip vouchers - even though the cost was comped, this still counts as a card load! (68)

1,000 + 48 + 550 + 68 + 68 = 1,734 chips in value. While you don't get the 4% gas kickback or the 6% fuel rebate, you could still use a credit card with a cash back rate, which for most good cards should be 2%. So you would be spending $98 to get 1,734 chips in total net value if you maxed out during the promo...and that works out to 5.6516 cents per chip.

So what does all this mean for you and the guy trying to offload his chips on you?

If there IS NOT an active double perks promo, and no crazy eGift card promotion, the seller needs to significantly be beating $80.64 per 1,000 chips in order for it to be worth your while, and if they give you crap on the value, you bring up the sections above for reasons why - the rewards chips you're missing out on, the gas perks you're missing out on, the 2-for Tuesday free swipes you're missing out on, and the 4% credit card cash back you're missing out on.

If there IS a double perks promotion for a gas discount going on currently, then they need to be beating $75.26 per 1,000 chips in order for it to be worth your time.

And finally, should the "buy $100 get five free '$20' vouchers" promo ever return, a seller would need to be beating $56.52 per 1,000 chips to make it worth your time to buy from them instead of that.. If that promo is going on but you've used every possible payment card, you still use this rate in negotiating with the seller - you might not have access to it any more but the chip seller doesn't need to know that... (I doubt this promo ever comes back though, but I'm including this information for reference in case it ever does.)

...now if buying from a third party you might still get credit card cash back which the seller can factor into THEIR side of the negotiations, and if they're on eBay you've got 1% eBay Bucks they can be considering on their end, and if it's on Amazon it would be 5% if you had the Prime Rewards card, but those pale in comparison to the additional deductions and boosts available on your end of the transaction.

TL;DR; y'all are paying way too much for chips when they come from sources outside of D&B, we need to stop letting that happen.