A textbook example that proves the point is a circa-1948-51 Club Harlem $5 chip from the Reno, Nevada casino of the same name. In general, the older the chip, the more valuable it is. Image courtesy of Potter & Potter Auctions and LiveAuctioneers. This circa 1948-51 Club Harlem $5 chip, issued by an integrated casino, made $1,900 plus the buyer’s premium in January 2021 at Potter & Potter Auctions.

Harrah’s Reno closed in 2020 after 83 years of operation. A group of more than 900 obsolete chips from the 1980s from Harrah’s Reno / Lake Tahoe Casino sold for $3,600 plus the buyer’s premium in August 2020 at Potter & Potter Auctions. Chips are typically rendered obsolete when the issuing casino goes out of business or it redesigns its chips and pulls the older ones from circulation. Most of the chips were destroyed, but that $5 chip likely was brought home as a souvenir, and is thought to be the only survivor.Īs with other collectibles, scarcity drives demand. Among its slot machines was a single blackjack table that was only open for a couple of months in the late 1970s. The casino operated in Las Vegas on Fremont Street from 1975 to 1980. The record price was set at the 2014 Casino Chip & Gaming Tokens Collectors Club (CC & GTCC) convention, which saw a $5 chip from The Golden Goose command $75,000. While it doesn’t happen every day, casino chips can achieve sums well in excess of their face value. Some vintage chips that bear the livery of defunct casinos or have eye-catching graphics (or both) bring hundreds of dollars each, with a few individual pieces selling for several thousand and the scarcest examples breaking the five-figure mark. The collecting and resale of casino chips is big business.

The casinos themselves might be thoroughly transformed or long since bulldozed, but their chips might not be worthless. Sometimes, though, people take casino chips home as souvenirs or forget to cash them in. They are meant to be exchanged for cash under that roof, on the spot. NEW YORK - Casino chips have no inherent value outside of the gambling venues that issue them. A $5 Faro casino chip from Las Vegas’ Hotel Fremont, drilled and notched by the casino to mark it as obsolete, brought $3,000 plus the buyer’s premium in January 2021 at Potter & Potter Auctions.

$500 chip in las vegas casino