I recall that the actual chips designs were lost during the Commodore break up...
I think Haynie said that someone didn't pay the storage fees to the cooling box thing that the design tapes were stored in. Is was apparently pretty cheap to keep them stored, just whoever it was that was in charge of that sort of thing stopped doing it. I don't know, maybe some weird computer stuff collector has them hanging on a wall like some kind of weird art he bought at an auction.