The Journey of a Chip: How Casino Chips Are Manufactured and Managed

Casino chips are by no means modern inventions. Since the 18th century, gaming venues and ancestors of modern casino houses used similar items to keep the score in card games. Chips are an essential part of any casino, and their primary function is to create a unique currency denomination for players. Casino chips are available to all players, not just high-stakes gamers. They are also used in various table games, including blackjack, roulette, and baccarat.

Nowadays, with more casinos providing cashless games and digitalized denominations, you may ask the question: are casino chips still relevant? Here, we will explore how casino chips are made, their management, and what the future holds for casino chips.

Casino Chips Usage and Need

You can purchase casino chips at cashiers’ desks inside a casino, at designated stations, and sometimes, at the gaming tables themselves. These casino chips have no monetary value outside the casino, but within the casino, they are counted as legal tender. These casino chips can only be used inside the casino where they are sold to you.

If you leave the casino and forget some chips in your pocket, or decide you want to take some home as souvenirs, no problem. Patrons are allowed to take their casino chips home. If you go back to the casino, you will be able to use them or sell them back to the casino. But you cannot trade your casino chips at other casinos.

Purpose of Casino Chips

The primary purpose of casino chips is for security. It ensures that no player can simply swipe their money off a table and escape. They would have to go to the cashier’s desk to turn the chips into legal tender. Plus, modern casino chips are traceable and casinos can monitor their movement. If a player tries to steal money from another player, detecting the theft would be much harder. The casino chips mitigate the dangers. Should anyone try to steal your casino chips, they will be quickly found out and the casino will return your chips swiftly.

The other main purpose is to make it easier for high rollers to count their money quickly. Instead of counting a wad of $100 bills, you can simply count how many chips you have. Casinos colour code their chips, to make it easy to count how much money is in play. And transparency is needed where money is concerned, especially at table games. Think of a game of poker, where players call or raise using casino chips. Or at roulette, where players have to place their chips on the paytables.

How Casino Chips Are Made

Most casinos use compression moulded chips, manufactured using composite materials. Historically, they were made either from clay or ceramic, but nowadays, casinos use composites. Each casino has its own process for creating casino chips, which is confidential and quite time-consuming. Casinos need durable chips, which can be inlaid with printed graphics or moulds. Chips in the US casinos generally weigh around 10 grams each. As for colours, each casino has its own special graph and colour scheme to represent different denominations. Chips represent anything from $1 up to $5,000, or even higher in certain locations.

Local gaming control boards may regulate the chip colours and sizes to maintain some consistency. However, casinos have to create unique “hallmarks” or identification spots to distinguish their casino chips from the chips at other casinos. Some casinos create unique denominations.

An example of which is $8 chips, or any denominations of 8, such as $88 or $888. Several US casinos offer these combinations as 8 is considered a lucky number in Chinese culture. Gamers may have rituals or superstitions relating to the number 8 – such as betting in increments of 8, and casinos want to provide them with this option.

Technological Features of Casino Chips

Don’t think of casino chips as simple ceramic or composite discs. Nowadays, they also have electronic radio-frequency identification tags to make them easier for the casino to track. Before the technology was available, there were instances where players tried to pass of counterfeit chips, to con the casinos out of their money. Though it still occurs nowadays, as counterfeiters go to great lengths to create fake chips and trade them back at casinos.

It is far harder nowadays to pull off the con, and casinos can detect fraud very quickly. They can identify their own chips swiftly, and even track details such as who bought the chips, at which cashier, and how they paid for the chips. The Eye in the Sky can also help security personnel quickly locate and follow their chips. There are so many cameras, and they can zoom into such tiny details, that make it next to impossible for fraudsters to cheat the system.

Security Measures and Precautions

This security also helps detect when players steal chips from other players. You could be playing a game of blackjack, so focused on your gaming that you don’t notice someone walking past and taking a couple of chips from your stack. But the casino staff will notice. If the perpetrator reaches the cashier’s desk, the staff will surely catch them. The casinos can detect who bought these chips (you), and after recognizing the error, they can look back at the camera footage and find out what happened.

Anyone trying to run off with the chips cannot do so without having to pass the cashier’s desk. But let’s say they ran off home with the chips, to return at a later date. At some point, the victim will realize that they are short a few chips. They notify the casino, and the casino will be able to trace the perpetrator. The casino surveillance system will be able to track the fraudster, and using facial recognition technology figure out who did the crime.

If the perpetrator doesn’t have an account at the casino, then the most likely course of action will be to contact the police, and then wait for further developments. But in the majority of cases, it doesn’t escalate so far, as the perpetrators are identified before they can leave the casino.

Lifetime of a Casino Chip

Just like casino cards, roulette balls, dice, or any other gaming apparatus, casino chips don’t last forever. Over time, chips wear down, and when they show obvious signs of use, the casino removes them from circulation. The casino then either recycles them to create new chips or destroys them completely.

Casinos monitor their chips constantly, and they are quick to remove any damaged chips. As a patron, you don’t want to use dirty or damaged chips. They can also compromise the casino’s security precautions, and having worn chips on the casino floor may make it more difficult to identify counterfeit chips.

Digitalization of Casino Chips

The transition to cashless and digitalized solutions directly affects casinos. People are using cards or virtual cards on mobile devices to make payments, and the number of cash payments constantly dwindles. Patrons at casinos also generally use electronic payments to buy their chips, but there is also an emphasis amongst game developers to create games that do not require money or casino chips.

Brick-and-mortar casinos have to reimagine the way their patrons use their gaming products. It doesn’t necessarily just relate to how players carry their money or the efficiency with which they can withdraw large jackpot wins. No, it also relates to any loyalty programs or bonus initiatives that landbased casinos can offer. This is one of the biggest pulls of online casinos. Online casinos can quite easily just gift you a bonus and put it in your gaming account.

Physical gaming venues can’t efficiently just give you bonus chips or coupons. Though a lot of the bigger casinos, such as the Vegas Strip establishments, have digitalized solutions that make it easier for players. You can pick up comp points through your gameplay, redeem bonuses, claim bonus spins offers, and get all the same kinds of perks you would have at online casinos.

Future of Casino Chips and Money Management

Most casinos use hybrid solutions, utilising casino chips while working out ways to digitalize the transactions. That way, you can enjoy the best of both worlds. You get the real casino atmosphere while snapping up bonuses and comp points. Just as you would at the physical casino’s online counterpart.

More land-based casinos are accepting cryptocurrencies, and as the technology develops, so too will the convenience of money management options. Casino chips are certainly a part of the vision. You will no doubt still find casinos providing physical chips in the years to come.