[inca911]

If I understand correctly:
1. You want nice chips to play with.
2. You have $1000 to spend.
3. You are concerned about using "live" chips as they might walk out.

If this is your situation, buy some nice used Paul-son chips (like from The Vineyard) for your home game. They are Paul-son TH+C so they look and feel great. Due to rarity, they will hold their value over time.

I prefer $100NL tournaments with an every 15/20 minute increase in the blinds (depending on how much time is available to play). A schedule like:

1...2
2...4
3...6
4...8
(final re-buyin opportunity and color up all $1)
5...10
then increase by 5 until tourney end

A reasonable rule of thumb is the tourney will end when big + small blind = 10% of chips in play. The format runs about 3 hours, and allows re-buyins during the first hour.

After the final buy-in and color-up, the $1 chips are then available for use in side games.