Value Of Old Casino Coins
LAS VEGAS — Wendy Schultz knew that her parents collected casino memorabilia, but not until they died within a few months of one another in 2005 did she understand the magnitude of their efforts.
A $7 Harrah's Tahoe which appears to be a full 1ozt coin. Defunct casino now, so it's a bit more collectible. A $10 Buffalo Bill's Medicine Crow (very common) And my favorite - because Caesar's Tahoe is defunct - a $40 Caesar's labeled 24 Karat HGE (heavy gold electroplate) over.999 Fine Silver. The strike is phenomenal on the portrait.
“We kept finding ashtrays and playing cards and chips,” said Mrs. Schultz of Henderson, Nev., “and we’d come back the next day and it seemed like it would multiply in the evening. I’ve since been told my dad had the fourth-largest slot token collection in the world.”
And so it is that Mrs. Schultz and her husband, Paul, spent three days last week at the annual Casino Chip and Gaming Tokens Collectors Club convention at the Riviera Hotel and Casino on the Strip. They sat at a pair of tables crowded with dozens of fat three-ring binders stuffed with chips and coins, all carefully annotated and priced. With a portrait of her prim-looking parents, Bettye and Vince Mowery, keeping sentry behind them, the Schultzes worked to reduce the spoils of the Mowerys’ 20-year passion for gathering — some might call it hoarding — untold thousands of items.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to get rid of all of it in our lifetime,” Mrs. Schultz said. Yet her main regret, she said, is not the sales job she inherited but “that I didn’t have more conversations with Daddy about the history of these pieces.” She added, “They’re all so fascinating.”
Many of the 2,000 vendors and enthusiasts who come here each year for the convention think of themselves as both collectors and guardians of the history of gambling around the world.
“The chip collector has a love of history because the chips come from institutions that may or may not any longer be in existence,” said Christine Smith of Glencoe, Ill., who wore a gold diamond-encrusted pendant in the figure of a royal flush and a pair of blackjack card earrings. Ms. Smith carried a bag with the image of a slot machine on its side and oversize dice for handles.
Continue reading the main story“I think they’re artwork,” Mrs. Smith said. “Many of them are just absolutely beautiful.”
Each item — be it chip, swizzle stick or imprinted shoehorn — represents a time, a place and a culture, from obscure illegal Prohibition-era gambling halls to the casinos run by organized crime figures to joints frequented by the Rat Pack to contemporary casinos on Indian reservations.
Many chip collectors start out as coin collectors but grow disillusioned at how the value of coins, particularly those minted mainly for collectors, can be manipulated.
Sometimes, though, the value of the objects of their new passion can be just as staggering. Last year, Eric Rosenblum, a lawyer from Merrick, N.Y., sold a $100 chip he picked up in the 1980s at the now defunct Desert Inn casino here for $20,000. Returning home from a vacation some 45 years ago, a Missouri woman, Sandy Marbs, threw a $1 chip from the Showboat Casino, once a Las Vegas mainstay, into her jewelry box. Last month, she sold it on eBay for nearly $29,000.
Still, most items at the show go for more modest prices. A chip from Al Capone’s Moonlight Club in Chicago is priced at $20, a keychain from the Edgewater Hotel-Casino in Laughlin, Nev., costs $1.50, an unwrapped bar of soap from the Flamingo in Las Vegas is priced at $12.50, and the asking price for a 1955 Life magazine with a cover story warning that Las Vegas’s boom times were probably over is $25.
Show attendees tend to be retirees, mostly men, which concerned Bob Ensley, 68, of Westminster, Colo., who hauled $45,000 worth of his collection to the event.
“You don’t see an awful lot of young collectors coming through, which is a shame,” Mr. Ensley said, adding, “They could make themselves a nice retirement nest egg just by collecting these things.”
There are social costs, though. Ms. Smith admits that she and her husband, Sheldon, are known back in Glencoe as “those crazy chip people,” their home overrun by memorabilia. The first thing visitors see when they enter, she said, are antique gambling wheels and a pair of four-foot-wide chips featuring images of Playboy bunnies that once hung at the Palms in Las Vegas around the time the resort opened its Playboy Club.
“I can’t even invite my priest to my house because my crucifix is in my bedroom and the Playboy bunny chips are over the fireplace,” she said. “Isn’t that pathetic?”
Casino chip collecting is the practice of intentionally taking casino chips (also called 'checks') from Casino premises or trading or collecting online, or in person, for the purpose of collection. Casino chip collecting is a variety of exonumia, or coin collecting. Before it became a more serious hobby, casino chip collecting was simply a case of people keeping them as souvenirs from a casino they may visit. The biggest boost to the hobby came with the creation of the online auction site eBay. eBay has now become the most popular way to collect and trade casino chips with listings in the casino category regularly including more than 20,000 items for sale.
Grand Casino Coin Value
Casino chip collecting became increasingly popular during the 1980s, as evidenced by the sale of chips through several casino and collecting newsletters. Bill Borland's Worldwide Casino Exchange (early 1980s) had a casino story each issue and dozens of old chips for sale. Likewise, Al W Moe'sCasino and Gaming Chips magazine ran for several years in the mid-1980s and attracted hundreds of subscribers. Each issue featured stories and pictures from old Nevada casinos and included photos of old, collectible chips.
Archie Black established the Casino Chip & Gaming Tokens Collectors Club (CC>CC) in 1988[1] in response to the continuing evolution and popularity of chip collecting. Membership in the club includes an annual subscription to the club's magazine, Casino Collectible News, now in its 26th year. The magazine has won six First Place Awards from the American Numismatic Association for Outstanding Specialty Numismatic Publication.The club held its first annual convention at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino in 1992. The 22nd annual convention wrapped up in June and the 23rd annual convention to be held at South Point Hotel, Casino & Spa 25-27 June 2015.
As the number of collectors grew, the creation of an official grading system was viewed as being a useful tool in part of the process to help determine the collectible value of the chips, as opposed to the face value they can also represent. In 2003, members of the CC>CC's Standards and Archives Committee agreed on a grading system that would be used worldwide. There are many published price guides, but two in particular are more widely used by casino chip collectors. The Official U.S. Casino Chip Price Guide, now in its 4th edition, covers chips from casinos in Nevada, Atlantic City, New Jersey, Colorado, Deadwood, South Dakota and the several Midwest States that permit Riverboat casinos. The Chip Rack, now in its 15th edition, attempts to include all chips and checks issued by casinos in the State of Nevada. Some chips are considered high-value and have a listed value as high as $50,000. During their 2014 convention, a $5 chip from the Golden Goose SOLD for $75,000, and a $5 chip from the Lucky Casino SOLD for $52,500.
Below is the system that is currently used to grade them:
Value Of Old Casino Coins Free
| Grade | Description |
|---|---|
| New (N) | Never used in games; square and round edge chips will be as from the manufacturer with absolutely no wear, no dings or nicks; no scratches on surface of chip or inlay. |
| Slightly Used (SU) | Only slight signs of use, edge still crisp but ever so slightly dulled with very little wear; cross hatching may show slight wear near edge; few or no edge nicks; still retains luster in mold design; bold hot stamp; inlays excellent. |
| Average (A) | Typical chip found in play after months/years of use; slightly rounded edges; will have minor defects such as small nicks on edges; inlays are beginning to show even wear and about half of the cross hatching has worn from the body surface; hot-stamps have dulled, beginning to show even wear and may be missing a small amount of foil. |
| Well Used (WU) | Moderate and uniform wear of edge, surface and hot stamp; noticeable edge nicks and/or surface scratches; no luster in mold design; cross hatching is nearly worn off; hot stamp is still readable but much of the foil is missing. |
| Poor (P) | Edges that were formerly sharp and square, are now well worn bicycle tires; original hot stamp foil is mostly missing with only the recesses visible (may have to hold towards a light); moderate to large chips (nicks); surface cross hatching barely visible (if at all); severe scratches to inlay or chip surface; severe color fading; partial wear up to half of Chipco design from the edge to the center of the chip. Damage, such as cracks, breaks, missing inlay or other chip structure do not apply to this category. |
| Cancelled or Modified (Can) (Mod) | (Either by the manufacturer or the casino): A. Drilled, B. Notches, C. Overstamped, D. Clipped, E. Bent, F. Painted. |
| Damaged (Dam) | A. Severe nicks or chunks, B. Loose or missing inlay, C. Cracked, D. Broken, E. Warped, F. Permanent Stain, G. Severe Fading, H. Cigarette Burn(s). fire damage, I. Over-cleaning. |
As well as the system for grading chips, there is also a system for identifying chips shown below:
| Issue | The chronological order in which the chip was issued. |
| Denomination | Refers to the dollar amount of the chip. |
| Basic Color | The base color for most of the chip. |
| Mold | Identifies the look/manufacturer/distributor of the chip. |
| Inserts | The different color patterns used on its edge. |
| Inlay | Refers to the size and shape of the inlay, as well as composition and color. |
| Rarity | The best estimate of the number of surviving chips of its kind known to exist. |
Coin In Coin Out Casinos
There are many different ways to collect casino chips. Because of the amount of chips available and the increasing price of some, collectors have begun to specialize. A collector might choose to collect every chip from a certain casino or one from every Las Vegas casino. Collecting by denomination is also very popular, such as only $1 or $5 chips. The first rule of proper care and storage is to keep them away from sunlight and fluorescent light. The best way to store a collection is to keep them in a folder. As opposed to a coin collection, cleaning the chips will not decrease their value but is still not recommended unless really necessary. Chips have inlays and hot stamps on them which can get unreadable over the time if they are not maintained properly. The hot stamps and the inlays of the chips are what determine their value so it is very critical to ensure that these are not severely damaged while handling them. Collectors especially should be careful and maintain their rare chips effectively to keep their value intact.[2]
Value Of Gold
References[edit]
- ^http://www.ccgtcc.com/ccgtcc_history.pdf
- ^'Cleaning Chips'. Retrieved 1 June 2011.