The number of collectors grew significantly with the appearance of online betting and the release of limited edition chips that are released by casinos to commemorate a variety of events ranging from the Super Bowl to concerts. Usually, the casinos close and the chips are destroyed, as is the case of the famous casinos’ Showboat (1954-2001) and Sahara (1952-2011) Las Vegas were to step Frank Sinatra. But ex-employees or clients who for some reason keep a card can make a lot of money out of them.

An example of this is a $ 1 chip from the closed Showboat casino that Sandy Marbs put up for auction by E Bay. It started at $ 2.25 and closed at $ 28,988.88 after he refused to close the auction early with offers of $ 1000, $ 4000 or $ 5000.

Glenn Grush was the winner of the Showboat casino chip auction. The chip was in a jewelry box for 47 years along with other minor chips, and Sandy decided to put them up for auction in e Bay after having been selling things in a range of between $ 5 and $ 30. This is an exceptional case where there are only two copies of the file. It is necessary to highlight the honesty of the collectors as according to her she could have sold the chip for only 10 dollars.

Besides, Sandy received help from the “Club of collectors of coins of the game and Casino chips” (Casino Chip & Gaming Chips Collectors Club, Inc.), which provided him with better photos so that his value would be better appreciated. This club was created in 1988 and has about 6,000 members on the list, while 3000 are active. Each year they meet for their annual convention.

Within the collection of casino chips, there are many ways to classify them: by denomination, by geographical area, obsolete, specific casinos, etc. The casino chips belong to a category of coins known as “exumonia” (referring to the substitutes of money), and collections of tiles are as varied as the collections of coins. Collectors are looking for tokens of specific denominations such as $ 2.50. Others look for specimens from a particular manufacturer or a place (such as Atlantic city for example). Others collect by color or edge design such as the Green Key. But the most wanted are the of the casinos of Las Vegas, especially those that were built in the 1940s and 1950s by people such as Mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. There have been Chip collectors since gambling. From the late 1800s, poker chips were made of bone, Mother-Pearl, and ivory and were highly collected. But between the late 19th and early 20th centuries casinos began to make Composite clay chips.

Coins, gold dust and gold nuggets were also used in the early days as exchange units, which were replaced by chips that were easier to manipulate. They were made of ivory, bone, wood, paper and a mixture of clay and lacquer. The problem with these flat-surface chips was that some malicious people could make their own chips and put them in the game. In the end, the casino ended up with more chips than it had at the beginning. That’s why manufacturers began to include a design to differentiate themselves from the others. The design could be embossed, embossed or embedded. The Ivory chips were hand-carved with numbers, initials, flowers, animals and any other model. The Ivory chips were made for each client to have a different set than the other.

With the legalization of gambling in 1931, casinos grew steadily. The former were small premises with one or two betting tables in the background, very different from the current big casinos. Low denomination tokens were the most used and worn, while high denomination tokens were less frequent and are currently more difficult to obtain. There are a wide variety of types of chips, with compressed clay being the most common. Even within these kinds of chips some elements make them different and some rarer than others.

The mold is the design that is around the edge of the chip. This helps to date the card and identify the manufacturer. The points on the sides or grafts allow the name to be identified more quickly. The center, which may vary in size and shape, may contain the casino logo, denomination, and other designs. The composite clay poker chips were made by several companies between the 1880s and the late 1930s, and there were about 1000 designs to choose from: they were white, red, blue and yellow but could be made of any color.

In the 1940s the material that began to be used as plastic for the cheapest home poker sets. They are injection molded, long-lasting, come in many designs and are easy to achieve. They also do not have the” feel ” or quality of the chips before 1940. The best chips that are currently manufactured are those made for casinos and poker tables: whether made of composite clay or injection molded.