Buying Casino Chips?

When playing craps, I will sometimes save a dollar chip as a souvenir. Next time I go to Vegas, I'm thinking about getting a dollar chip from each casino I visit, regardless if I play craps at the casino or not.

Is it considered bad form to just walk up to a table game and purchase one chip and not play? Can you buy chips directly from the cashier window where you normally exchange your chips for cash?

I would walk up to the cashier and get a chip. I would say it is more discourteous to the other players to hold up the game for that purpose, but then again it is no different than the person who walks up, buys in and plays one hand before leaving! Just my thoughts!!

Yeah buy at the cage. People do this all the time, and often the cashier will dig through the drawer and try to find a really clean one for you.

It's also acceptable to purchase from a table where there are no players.

I did that once, and the dealer actually took two stacks of reds and spread them out so I can pick the one I wanted.

Quote: blount2000

When playing craps, I will sometimes save a dollar chip as a souvenir. Next time I go to Vegas, I'm thinking about getting a dollar chip from each casino I visit, regardless if I play craps at the casino or not.

Is it considered bad form to just walk up to a table game and purchase one chip and not play? Can you buy chips directly from the cashier window where you normally exchange your chips for cash?

Happens all the time. That's how we all put our chip collections together. Dealers are used to it. Just don't buy a stack of 20 whites and then sit there at the BJ table going through 'em looking for the cleanest, sharpest edged ones. Years ago many casinos used metal coins on table games (also used as dollar slot coins), the only game you could buy the clay chips was the crap table. I guess folks tossing the dollar coins for hardways bets ripped up the felt. Don't forget to put together complete roulette chip sets from each casino, and often baccarat uses different denoms, and sometimes larger, chips.

Commemorative chips are sometimes only available at the cage. Grand Opening chips after the casino's been open a few years, anniversary chips, WSOP chips at the Rio, concerts or other events at Hard Rock and Palms, boxing chips at MGM, etc won't be found out on the floor at all since people carry them home. On the wall by the cages at Harrahs and Palms are displays of all the commemorative chips still available at the cage. Palms seems to specialize in Playboy chips btw, many still out on the floor. You can buy in for $200 at a table game and literally receive 40 different redbirds.

Some places, like Mirage comes to mind, never do commemoratives. They advertise their headliners like Terry Fator right now, but you won't find the old Danny Gans or Siegfried & Roy chips anymore, 'cept on ebay.

Quote: blount2000

When playing craps, I will sometimes save a dollar chip as a souvenir. Next time I go to Vegas, I'm thinking about getting a dollar chip from each casino I visit, regardless if I play craps at the casino or not.

Is it considered bad form to just walk up to a table game and purchase one chip and not play? Can you buy chips directly from the cashier window where you normally exchange your chips for cash?

Calling Doc. Calling Doc. He collects $1 chips from every casino he's been to. I'm sure he will say it is fine and normal to buy just one $1 chip from a table for your collection. A friend of mine is a dealer and says he gets that request once in a while and will search through the rack for the cleanest chip.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

It's also acceptable to purchase from a table where there are no players.

I did that once, and the dealer actually took two stacks of reds and spread them out so I can pick the one I wanted.

I prefer to go to an empty Roulette table (which might be harder to find in Vegas than before). It can be fun to just place a 6/8 on a craps table, take one of the $1 and see if you can make your money back.

I have over 200 chips in my collection, if you are looking to buy a bulk amount of chips a good place to go to is Spinettis, near downtown. If you buy in bulk you can talk them into doing 1.80 I think per chip, it is a lot easier than driving around to each casino. Ill post pictures of my chip collection soon.

To tie this in with another recent thread: If the cashier won't/can't sell chips (some don't), buy one from an empty table. Three-Card Poker is usually completely vacant...

A woman asked a dice dealer for a chip and handed him a dollar, he selected a chip that had been in use but was quite new and gave it to her directly in her hand. There were no problems with any of this. Its one lousy buck and some woman who wants fond memories of the casino and may be back someday. They were perfectly happy and the table wasn't all that crowded or busy anyway.

I don't see why casinos are uptight about it. Its chip that will never be cashed so its pure profit for them and its going to be shown to friends and relatives... free advertising.

The only reason casinos might be uptight is that the $1 chips cost more than $1. If you want to collect $5 chips I'm sure they'll be happy to sell you as many as you want. I believe the Rio used to be fond of doing $5 commemorative chips.

I doubt they cost more than $1 each, the casinos buy them in such high bulk they are probably a quarter each or less.

Quote: FleaStiff

A woman asked a dice dealer for a chip and handed him a dollar, he selected a chip that had been in use but was quite new and gave it to her directly in her hand. There were no problems with any of this. Its one lousy buck and some woman who wants fond memories of the casino and may be back someday. They were perfectly happy and the table wasn't all that crowded or busy anyway.

I don't see why casinos are uptight about it. Its chip that will never be cashed so its pure profit for them and its going to be shown to friends and relatives... free advertising.

Could be worse, last time in WV someone BOUGHT IN TO PLAY for $4. I thought I was seeing things. But they started playing.

Quote: MathExtremist

If you want to collect $5 chips I'm sure they'll be happy to sell you as many as you want. I believe the Rio used to be fond of doing $5 commemorative chips.

My collection of $5 chips includes commemorative chips from the Mirage, Palms, Flamingo, and LV Hilton because I couldn't find non-commemorative chips through the course of normal play. I'm not sure if hooters has non-calendar girl chips, but if they do then my Hooters chip is also commemorative.

I just asked a GM friend of mine -- 4 years ago the price was $0.65 at casino volume, and he thinks $1/chip is probably a good ballpark today. Obviously the price goes way up when you start doing RFID but that's not on $1 chips.

Quote: MathExtremist

I just asked a GM friend of mine -- 4 years ago the price was $0.65 at casino volume, and he thinks $1/chip is probably a good ballpark today. Obviously the price goes way up when you start doing RFID but that's not on $1 chips.

I'd have to think if it the price went much over $1 they would simply use coins. Some of the low-limt joints I have been in already use JFK Halves for odd payouts in low limit games. Why not? US Mint wants them in circulation anyways.

Sure, but $1 US coins are nowhere close to the size of a casino chip. That'd screw up dealer procedure just about everywhere -- imagine trying to pay off a winning $5 + $10 odds pass line point of 6 with chips of different sizes. I wonder if the U.S. Mint could be persuaded to do a run of $1 coins with the same shape and weight as $1 casino chips...

Quote: MathExtremist

Sure, but $1 US coins are nowhere close to the size of a casino chip. That'd screw up dealer procedure just about everywhere -- imagine trying to pay off a winning $5 + $10 odds pass line point of 6 with chips of different sizes. I wonder if the U.S. Mint could be persuaded to do a run of $1 coins with the same shape and weight as $1 casino chips...

The Eisenhower dollar has a 38mm diameter, and most casino chips are around 39mm. So that could work. Do you think the casts are still around somewhere?

Quote: rdw4potus

The Eisenhower dollar has a 38mm diameter, and most casino chips are around 39mm. So that could work. Do you think the casts are still around somewhere?

The problem is less the diameter and more the thickness. The Eisenhower dollar coin is, according to Wikipedia, 2.58mm thick while a casino chip is roughly 3.2mm thick.

Quote: AZDuffman

I'd have to think if it the price went much over $1 they would simply use coins. Some of the low-limt joints I have been in already use JFK Halves for odd payouts in low limit games. Why not? US Mint wants them in circulation anyways.

I remember in the mid-1980s that all of the casinos in Reno each had their own $1 "coins" ("in theory," they could not be used in each other's casinos, but in practice, they were all the same size, and nobody seemed to mind) - did they do this in Vegas as well?

As for the original question (and for a minute, I thought I was the only one here who collected denominations higher than $1), I answered this in another thread (something about somebody wanting to "buy in" at the cage and being told they had to go to a table to do it); if you are looking for just one chip, go to a cashier. (Among other things, you aren't pressured into having to actually play just to get a souvenir chip, and you're not bothering a dealer.) About half the time, the cashier asked me, "Why do you want one chip?"; I assume it's because if you are looking for a souvenir, either they will look for a "clean" one or they will force one of their "commemorative" chips on you (one casino - I can't remember which one off-hand - would not sell me a "regular" chip for some reason).

(Note that some casinos share - the last time I was in Vegas, Encore used Wynn, Slots-O-Fun had just started using Circus Circus, and I can't remember if Palazzo were different from Venetian or not.)

Quote: MathExtremist

Sure, but $1 US coins are nowhere close to the size of a casino chip. That'd screw up dealer procedure just about everywhere -- imagine trying to pay off a winning $5 + $10 odds pass line point of 6 with chips of different sizes. I wonder if the U.S. Mint could be persuaded to do a run of $1 coins with the same shape and weight as $1 casino chips...

Excellent idea. We use .25 and .50 peices on Pai Gow and BJ. I look at the dollar slot coins some places still have, and think, why not use the dollar coins? The minting and cage conversion expense would be eliminated, and the old slot token coins are different sizes anyway.
I also wondered about this, in of all places, Cambodia, which seems to use American $1 and $5 bills for all transactions over 5 cents in value. They have a reserve of ancient wash-out dollar bills floating around for their daily economy. Use the American dollar coins instead of the $1 bills, and counterfeiting and bill disintergration would be done.

Quote: AZDuffman

Could be worse, last time in WV someone BOUGHT IN TO PLAY for $4. I thought I was seeing things. But they started playing.

Someone had just given a panhandler Five Dollars but he wanted to save some for his retirement.

Quote: MathExtremist

Sure, but $1 US coins are nowhere close to the size of a casino chip. That'd screw up dealer procedure just about everywhere -- imagine trying to pay off a winning $5 + $10 odds pass line point of 6 with chips of different sizes. I wonder if the U.S. Mint could be persuaded to do a run of $1 coins with the same shape and weight as $1 casino chips...

Not sure how that would affect things. In craps you have to handle cheques with two hands and you need to handle whites all the time. Other games are slower payout pace and it should work. BJ espically since they already use the JFK coins.

Would the mint do it? I bet they might. If they could get casinos and vending machine companies onboard it would help aceptance. There are worse things. Remember, Beta was better but porn came on VHS.

I'm not saying, I'm just saying.

Quote: FleaStiff

Someone had just given a panhandler Five Dollars but he wanted to save some for his retirement.

Sometimes seeing the people in a "locals" place makes me glad I live somewhere else.

Me too. I deal to locals. Love most of 'em, though.

Quote: Wizard

Calling Doc. Calling Doc. He collects $1 chips from every casino he's been to. I'm sure he will say it is fine and normal to buy just one $1 chip from a table for your collection. A friend of mine is a dealer and says he gets that request once in a while and will search through the rack for the cleanest chip.

I've been away from the forum for a while (It seemed to be taking over my life), and haven't posted in a bit over three weeks. It now seems that maybe I have a very small role to play here. Not only did the Wizard post this "Calling Doc" message, but when I didn't join in after 24 hours, he sent me a P.M. Thanks for the personal invitation, Wiz!

As he stated, I collect a $1 chip from every casino I can visit. It doesn't take long for such a hobby to become an obsession in which going to a new casino for the souvenir chip is at least as important as the gambling. I have discussed this around here several times. My collection represents 237 casinos thus far (three more added this past week from Illinois and Indiana). I have itineraries prepared for three chip-collecting excursions, one to New Mexico and Colorado, one to northern New York, Montreal, and environs, and the third to eastern Pennsylvania and Atlantic City (where I am missing a chip from the newly-renamed Golden Nugget.) Don't know just when I will make those trips, but at least I recognize this as an obsession, even though I work such a trip around some other vacation element.

My personal policy is that the collection should consist of chips only from casinos where I have actually played -- no eBay chips, no buying from the cashier, etc. I have only violated that policy three times in collecting the 237 chips. Those three violations all involved purchasing a single chip from the cashier, and the reasons I broke my own rule are described in the first post of my thread on the Silver Saddle Saloon.

As to the original question and others that have been raised in this thread, I think it would be just fine for a collector to buy a chip from the cashier, buy a chip from any table (provided it doesn't interfere with the game), buy a chip from eBay or other vendor, or receive the chip as a gift from someone else. It all depends upon what you want the collection to mean to you, and your collection doesn't need to have the same meaning as mine. I don't see any justification for anyone objecting to your buying a chip at the cashier or a table, so long as you don't interfere with the game or the players.

I only collect $1 chips, mostly because any higher denomination for a collection of hundreds of chips would wind up consuming more cash than I would want to use for this. I'd rather have the cash go to gambling-entertainment losses (if absolutely necessary) than to higher-priced pieces of clay. Thus, I have very few commemorative chips at all. There is another reason for sticking with the $1 chips. I have all of my collection on display under a glass cover on my office desktop. I posted a photo of that some time back, but I don't have an up-to-date photo. The higher-denomination chips are quite pretty with their distinctive red, green, black, etc., but a collection of any one denomination would become quite monochromatic, I suspect. Even though white is the most common color for $1 chips, there is quite a variation, with lots of tones of blues and a number of tans, beiges, browns, grays, etc. I think that makes for a much more attractive display overall.

As to the subject of coins and tokens, I could be completely wrong on this, but I think they were originally intended to be close enough in size and weight that they would function in the slot machines intended for the full-size dollar coins, such as the Eisenhower but more likely the predecessors like the Liberty Walking dollar. There just weren't enough of the real dollar coins available to keep the machines working without the tokens minted by the individual casinos. After the casinos went to TITO instead of coins, there was a tremendous surplus of tokens not useful for much more than scrap metal. Many casinos, particularly the low-end ones, started using the tokens at their tables. My collection of 237 "chips" includes 11 tokens. I also have two tokens not on display -- they are my original chips from the Hard Rock and Caesars in Las Vegas, which I subsequently replaced with clay chips.

Quote: Doc

I've been away from the forum for a while (It seemed to be taking over my life), and haven't posted in a bit over three weeks. It now seems that maybe I have a very small roll to play here.

Small like hell! And welcome back. I assure you more people than the Wizard have missed you.

I said once I lack the collector's temperament, but I like reading about collections and collectors. Usually you're very passionate people, and that comes through in your stories. To boot, some of those stories are very interesting.

So please keep posting.

Thanks to Doc and everyone else for the responses. I had never seen chips being purchased from the cashier, so I'm glad to hear using the cashier is an option (especially if the tables games are all busy).

My original thoughts on the chip collecting were to just have a small memento from the various hotel/casinos I happened to visit regardless of whether I played there or not (i.e. I may stop by the MGM strictly to eat at a restaurant there).

Since I'm essentially at the beginning of my chip collecting journey, I may rethink my initial idea and make an effort to make as many chips as possible ones that I have actually played with as opposed to straight purchased. I guess the best time to make that type of decision is at the front end of starting a collection, versus deciding halfway through that you want the majority of your collection to consist of chips you have personally played!