Casino chips are one of the strongest associations with gambling. An indicator of wealth and good fortune, they are a desirable attribute that is a pleasure to see, hold and hear. Moreover, the casino is great at decorating chips in such a way that someone creates entire collections of them.
Casino chips are called a kind of internal currency that is used in a particular institution. It also has other names, such as chips or tokens.
Casinos have been around for hundreds of years. However, players paid for a long time with money, gold, silver or other valuable items. But over the years, establishments have been moving toward eventually inventing the means of payment that is the standard today.
At first, they tried to make chips from ivory, paper and other materials. The standard has not yet been established, so manufacturers have been experimenting and trying to find something of their own. Different materials, different shapes and sizes.
It was only in the 1880s that casino chips began to be produced that look like modern ones. They were made from clay that was pressed into special molds and became popular despite their tendency to break when used carelessly.
In the early 1950s, casino chip manufacturers found a solution to fragility. They began to add other materials to the clay, which increased their resistance to rough handling. It is to this period that some attribute the time of the appearance of the first modern chips. And the first institution that began to use them is the Flamingo casino in Las Vegas.
In the 1980s, ceramic chips appeared in casinos. They offered more opportunities for drawing drawings, so they began to displace clay ones.
Establishments do not issue their own chips. They order them from other companies. There are many of them, and they are located in different parts of the world. As in all other areas, there are high-end products that are developed by well-known companies, as well as companies operating in the cheap segment, whose products are mainly used not in casinos, but for home games.
CHIPCO casino chips are considered among the most valuable and are the most sought after by collectors. It is believed that more than 60 million of their chips are used in casinos around the world.
There is also Atlantic Standard Molding. They started in 1912 with the production of dominoes, bowling balls and billiards, and then also started the production of casino chips.
Chips have their own history and value. For some, this value is much higher than their face value. Collecting chips is a relatively new activity. It is said that this hobby began to gain popularity in the eighties of the last century.
Collecting has taken on a fairly significant scale, so that even official wear categories and various criteria have been established for chips. $5 chips can sell for tens of thousands of dollars. And collectors collect hundreds of samples in different institutions of the world.
From time to time, establishments change chips. And this does not always depend on their wear and tear. The casino can change them at any time. According to some reports, this happens quite rarely, for example, when the owner changes or in the event of a rebrand.
When this happens, casinos usually give some time for players to exchange old chips. After this period they are no longer accepted. Someone heard that some establishments give a year, others saw notices of 120 days. In any case, if you're not going back to the casino you're leaving soon, the safest thing to do is to cash them out and take only a few with you as a souvenir.
Someone says that, in theory, chips should not be taken out of the casino. However, institutions do not pay attention to this, since it is simply unrealistic to keep track of this. Someone even described situations where players bought chips of a certain denomination, and then sold them to the players.
Compared to paper money, it seems that casino chips are very easy to counterfeit. The design is not so complicated, the shape is standard, the material can be selected. Not surprisingly, many are trying to trade this. After all, you can mix fakes with real ones, hoping that employees will not notice this. Some scammers try to convert smaller chips to larger ones so they don't have to do the job from scratch.
Below is a video showing the process. First, the chip is thrown into boiling water to remove the sticker from the dollar chip. Then the pattern is copied - gray, blue stripes. Different colors are mixed to match the color as perfectly as possible. First, the entire surface is covered with gray, and then the places that should remain gray are covered with tape and dark paint is applied. A new sticker is scanned, printed and glued.
A separate drawing and decals are developed for each casino. This is done not so much for beauty, but in order to distinguish one from the other. After all, each institution uses only its own. Although there is information that casinos in Nevada can accept chips from other establishments.
In addition to logos and a unique design, chips are equipped with other protection. For example, ultraviolet signs that are invisible under normal light. There are chips with radio frequency identification. Some even embed microchips. In general, security does not stand still.
Even with chips, you can do various tricks. Professionals make interesting tricks. Poker players especially like to flaunt them. There is even a player who was nicknamed Magician (Magician), who initially trained as a magician, and then became a professional poker player.
