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Casino chips are also known as tokens or checks. Gaming houses began to introduce them in the nineteenth century and early examples were made of bone, wood, paper or clay. Modern chips are, surprisingly, also made of a clay-like substance rather than plastic. How they are actually made is a closely guarded secret though it involves compressing the material at great pressure. The edges are not painted; the chip has grooves cut into the edges and composite of a different color is used as the infill. They are, like currency, deliberately difficult to manufacture (and counterfeit).
Chips offer the casinos many advantages. They are much more convenient than dollar bills. They can be stacked and counted quickly and accurately: because of their accurate manufacture they can be counted simply by weighing them. They are harder to copy than bills and cheating is easier to spot. The chip is a part of the gambling experience and is an advertisement for the casino. Finally, and perhaps most important, casinos noticed that customers gamble much more freely with chips than with real money!
Casino chip collecting is now a very popular activity. It is considered a subset of numismatics or coin collecting and is referred to as exonumia. Casinos have responded to the interest by releasing boxed sets of chips. Most trading now occurs on Ebay and this site is designed to assist in the location of chips from the popular auction venue.
Chip colors vary considerably from state to state. Some require standardization but other like Nevada allow casinos to make their own choice. Most casinos are required by law to have an alternative replacement set of chips available should there be a threat of counterfeit activity. Fortunately the number of fakes is relatively low because the product has many security features incorporated in the design. This can range from UV chemicals to complex artwork or even RFID technology.
Chip values range form 50 cents to many thousands of dollars, though various gambling games attract their own range of values that have been designed to correspond with the gambling patterns. For example a $20 chip is ideally suited to baccarat, craps and roulette while a $2.50 chip is frequently used in blackjack.
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