175,000 points could be worth quite a lot if you can find a way to use them all in a year. I'm planning a vacation to Maui next summer and 7 nights at the Westin would be about $3500 paid or 72,000 points. About 4.9 cents per point - a pretty good redemption. I've also got a Key West trip that would be about $1500 or 48,000 points for about 3.1 cpp. Now if I could find a way to use the other 55,000 points I could probably get about $1700 worth of hotel rooms out of them for a grand total of $6700. So there you have it...

BTW, the bid is up to $3200 right now.