Nowadays, all good casino and poker chips are made of clay and more durable materials going through a compression moulding process. They are a composite material with a specific weight and a light click effect when thrown.
There are they who fetch large sums, and collectors who love to collect this niche item, accumulating them like chips on a poker table until finally their score is officially recognised by the Guinness Book of Records!
Rarity and Scarcity
Although we often think of casino chips as money, it’s no coincidence that they are also highly prized by collectors. In many ways, they are beautiful objects and investments in gold or silver with serried designs are collectors’ items. Some are exceptionally rare (the Okada satsuki Tokyu chips fall into this category). And they also have historical interest, adding to their monetary worth. Casino chips are not just a means to an end, but an end in themselves.
There’s no standard colour palette for casino chips and values change not just from country to country, but sometimes from casino to casino even within the same city. What’s a $1 casino chip worth in Las Vegas? Not the same as a $1 casino chip in New York City
Additionally, many of the casino chips have exquisite designs, such as diamonds, sapphires, rubies and white gold to reflect the denomination. That’s why some have higher valuation than others. Some of them are so rare as to be sold at four or five figures, which makes them an interesting investment.
Exclusive Editions
They might have no monetary value but, neverthesless, casino chips make for popular collectibles. Usually, though, the collections are rather mundane and the prices reflect that. Then again, there are always the exceptions, like this Bellagio chip from Las Vegas. This is one of the most expensive casino chips in the world.
The second elite set is a product of Cartier, a premier maker of jewellery and watches, that can pull off stuff relatively few can in the world of chips and even of playing cards: two gorgeous decks will set you back at least $30,000.
The second most expensive casino chip set – designed and created by the Swedish jeweller Stahl – is known as the Meteorite Poker Set. It is carved from pieces of an 800,000-year-old meteor, which fell to earth in northern Sweden and was named Muonionalusta. It contains 120 chips, a deck of premium quality cards and five ivory dice.
Historical Significance
The history of casino chips is a story of ingenuity, entrepreneurship, and excess. When gambling became popular again in the mid-1800s, the first casino chips were unadorned sand-moulded disks.
Such chips are used as casino money or token currency, which is done for obvious reasons. Casino chips may also have collectors’ value or simply served as souvenirs.
Dealer payoutIn most casinos, commemorative chips mark notable events: 90 to 95 per cent of these count as dealer payout, meaning that the casino will never see them again; they’ll end up on the resale market.
The most valuable of these commemorative chips are the highest denominations, such as CC>CC’s $20 chip from the Silver Slipper (a Las Vegas Strip casino that closed up shop in 1988), which recently sold for as much as $3,000. An obsolete chip like that, from a defunct casino, is the Holy Grail of collecting. It’s also, of course, a bonanza of profit for a casino.
Investment Potential
Like other luxury goods, chips are geographically rare because only one geographical area produces them, making them highly desirable. Even the most utilitarian ones are produced with the greatest of craftsmanship, making the collection of such things naturally a matter of technological and aesthetic pride, and encouraging what Bruce Wannell, a professor of Japanese at the University of Melbourne, has called the ‘narrative of connoisseurship’ – the self-construction and validation that is the stock-in-trade for any collector. Chips are not only a source of wealth: they help to enhance a collector’s status.
The pricey casino chips from across worlds are the must-have baubles for any collector wishing to amplify glamour quotient in his/her collection. The impeccable attention to detail and rare materials are said to touch the part of your brain where imagination ingest.
One bespoke games maker in London, Geoffrey Parker, has made a set of poker chips for more than $10 million. This set consists of 384 gilded 18-carat white gold poker chips inlaid with the skin of the stingray (animal leather known as shagreen). The chips are adorned with 22,364 precious stones – black diamonds, sapphires and rubies.