Hi George.... you still in Vegas?...lucky guy!

Here's my reasoning for the higher prices the LUXOR'S are bringing. Bear in mind, though, the figures I'm quoting are pretty difficult to verify.

The regular sized casinos typically order 1000 Strikes at a time. These normally last two months or so.
Let's just pretend that since the Luxor is larger and there are 17 different ones to go after, maybe their order of 1000 only lasts one month. It wouldn't take much to figure that's only 700 strikes per design especially in the year 2000 design. You'd have to study a little to see how long the 2001's were there.... probably a touch longer.
One can play around with the numbers, but he will still find that there probably weren't many around.

The bottom line.... people can't find the complete series.

Any other guesses out there?.... I kinda' like counting strikes .

No one panicked when the machines were still operating, but it quickly became pretty obvious how hard it was to complete those series'.