Are Old Poker Chips Worth Anything
Get the best deals on Antique Poker Chips when you shop the largest online selection at eBay.com. Old West Poker Chips Western Antique Late 1800’s. ASSUMING that the casino has not changed their chips, which casinos are known to do from time-to-time as a security measure. If you brought it back to the casino it came from & it's still recent, you can cash it in for the value of that chip. Again, if the casino has changed their chips, all old & unredeemed chips will be null & void.
Chips used for poker are among the most iconic parts of gambling overall. One complete basic set of poker chips usually consists of red, white, blue, green, and black chips. In addition, other larger high stakes tournaments also use other chipsets with more colors. For the most popular types of games like Texas Hold ‘Em Poker, or any other that uses chips as currency, you simply have to know how much each color is worth. It is important to remember that no set rules are in place for the values and that these are rather are common standards at poker events. In this article, we will go over the usual ways poker chips are valued during games.
Basic Poker Chips
White – $1
Pink – $2.50 (This is rare in poker, and it is sometimes used in black-jack)
Red – $5
Blue – $10
Green – $25
Black – $100
Full Poker Chips
White – $1
Yellow – $2 (Again, rarely used)
Red – $5
Blue – $10
Grey – $20 (Sometimes green)
Green – $25
Orange – $50
Black – $100
Pink – $250
Purple – $500
Yellow – $1000 (These are sometimes burgundy or gray)
Light Blue – $2000
Brown – $5000
Are You Hosting a Poker Event?
If you want to host a game of poker with a maximum of 10 players, the experts suggest you should have around 500 chips in three or four colors. If you plan to hold a much larger game with up to 30 people, an around 1,000 chips in four or five colors is what you will need. Regarding sets of chips for your own games, you should keep the number of different colors low and have the most chips of the lowest value. Then, you should have progressively smaller numbers of chips as they climb in value. One example of this is a 4:3:2:1 ratio for $1, $5, $10, and $25 chips. For 500 poker chips, totals of 200, 150, 100, and 50 chips in white, red, blue and green is the common practice.
Casino Chips
Casinos tend to have their own custom-designed chips that have monetary value and the name of the casino printed either printed or engraved on the sides. These are also often multi-colored, stylized, and have patterns. The color-coding in the casinos often follows the values listed above, but many casinos make up their own systems.
Atlanta casinos mostly follow the basic practice of white, pink, red, green, and black chips. They also add yellow chips for $20 and blue chips for $10.
Las Vegas casinos are arguably the most popular in the world, and they also follow the primary system. They too, however, add $20 chips. The Wynn casino also has brown $2 chips and peach $3 chips.
California has no legal laws for chip colors in California, but a common color coding method is as follows:
$1 is usually blue
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$2 is green
$3 is red
$5 is yellow
$10 is brown
$20 is black
$25 is purple
$100 is white and sometimes larger
$500 is brown or gray and often larger
High-Value Chips
Are Old Poker Chips Worth Anything Now
A chip that is worth more than $5,000 is rarely available at the public in casinos, because high-stakes games are mostly held privately. At these events, casinos sometimes use rectangular plaques that are around the same size as playing cards. Casinos that allow high-stakes gambling in public areas have plaques of $5,000, $10,000, $25,000, and even higher. Only Nevada and Atlantic City have these casinos.
This all will be unnecessary if you are going to an online casino because the chips are already counted for you. However, not all online casinos are user friendly, to say it like this. Some of them have the Gamstop tool that prevents players with gambling issues to approach the site. To avoid such sites, you can check the list of non Gamstop casinos at sites such as freespins.monster.
History
Most of the gambling games through history used some sort of cash marker for the currency. However, the first use of chips dates back at the early 1800s when the saloons and gaming houses in the Wild West started using engraved bones, ivory, or clay as chips. These were quite easy to copy however, so by the 1880s, several commercial companies manufactured customized clay chips for the use in saloons and gaming houses. They were carefully detailed and hard to forge.
In contemporary casinos, chips are custom and manufactured, still containing a percentage of clay. Some can also be ceramic. The weight, texture, design, and color are carefully observed and controlled, and some high-end casinos even have microchips in them, which means they are impossible to copy.
Picture this: You’ve had a swell time playing poker at your favorite casino, and for some reason, you decided to take the chips home with you. After some time, you’re back to the casino with your chips, hoping to exchange it for real money. But they tell you that your chips have expired and you can no longer exchange them for their monetary value.
Not only have you lost a substantial amount of cash, but you’re also stuck with expired poker chips and have no idea what to do with them. So you wonder, ”are old poker chips worth anything?” Let’s find out!
Are old poker chips worth anything? Yes, they are. You can make a ton of money selling them to poker chip enthusiasts or build an assortment of antique poker chips. While you can sell your chips, they won’t hold much value until they become a collector’s item. Vintage poker chips can fetch you a significant amount of money.
Poker chips hold great value, whether they are old or new. However, once new poker chips leave the walls of a casino, they become entirely useless as they no longer hold a monetary value. On the other hand, old poker chips will become useful outside the casino when they age.
Sadly only certain chips hold some value while the majority of old chips will be close to worthless.
Table of ContentsWhat do You do with Old Casino Chips?
If you own old casino chips, you can sell them for a reasonable price. Casino chips expire and go out of use. Sometimes, old casinos close down, and their chips are destroyed or stored away somewhere.
People with old chips generally viewed old poker chips as being worthless until a trend in the late 70s saw people keeping old poker chips as antiques.People that traveled far and wide authenticated their travels by collecting different chips from different locations. And from this hobby emerged a business. Casino chip collectors are numismatics but could be specifically called exonumia collecting.
In 1988, the Casino Chip & Gaming Tokens Collectors Club (CC>CC) was established as casino chips collecting gained increasing popularity. It became even bigger after eBay, the online auction site, was created in 1995. This gave owners and buyers a great platform to buy and sell vintage casinos chips with ease.
Some Collectors pay a massive amount of money for antique casino chips. The prices vary according to the state of the chip and the time it was in use. The older the chip, the more it’s valued.
What are Old Poker chips Worth?
There is no fixed range for old poker chips. Their quality and rarity usually determine the prices. A large number of vintage poker chips are sold off on eBay. This means it’s even harder to put an exact price on an old chip. However, there are high-value chips that naturally cost more.
In 2014, an extremely rare $5 chip from Golden Goose casino was sold for $75,000 at the Casino Chip & Gaming Tokens Collectors Club (CC>CC) convention. The chip was so rare that it was regarded as the only surviving chip of its kind.
But here’s where it gets interesting; the same kind of chip was sold for $3000 in the 90s. So what changed? Rarity. When it was sold for $3000, there were probably still a few of them available.
The Golden Goose Casino was closed in 1980, and you’d expect that a fair amount of their casino chips would still be around for 10 to 15 years. But by 2014, it would already be 34 years since the casino was closed, making it harder for any of their chips to exist.
Are Old Poker Chips Worth Anything Money
Now, it’s important to note that the prices of chips aren’t based solely on how old they are. The primary factor is a rarity.For example, a $5 chip from a lucky casino was sold for $52,500 at the same convention. Meanwhile, chips of higher denominations from the same casino have been sold for less. The $5 chip went for that much because only 2 of its kind was known to have survived.
Therefore, if you own a vintage casino chip that’s likely to be very rare, you’re almost sure to make a small fortune. Otherwise, you can auction your vintage casino chip on eBay and make some money from them.
What Buyers Look out for in Poker Chips
If you have a chip you want to sell off, here’s a chip guide that should tell you how valuable your chip may be.
- Type of Casino Chip: Buyers/Collectors lookout for casino chips based on their types. Poker chips can be differentiated by their colors and material used in their production.
- Inlay of the casino chip: This is an important check, to avoid counterfeit, casino chips are thoroughly examined for the inlay. An inlay that has been tampered with can be deemed as fake.
- Stamp: A casino chip without a stamp can not be redeemed. Stamp resonates with the originality of the casino chip. Without a clear stamp, the casino chip is nothing.
- Edges and Texture: Although due to age and usage, the edge and texture of the casino chip may be worn out, that is no excuse if it’s heavily damaged. Casino Chip Collectors deal with casino chips that are well preserved.
- Rarity: The lesser the number of surviving chips, the higher its value. If you have a chip from a collection that has long been lost, you could potentially sell it for a lot of money.
Are Old Poker Chips Worth Anything Buy
- Source/Mold: A casino chip gotten from known and trusted casino and card rooms have better chances to be redeemed even when they’ve expired. The mold identifies the manufacturer of the casino chip.
If your chip passes the above, it could probably be worth great money. Preserve it well and cash out big.
Are Old Poker Chips Worth Anything For Cash
Final Thoughts
Don’t be quick to dispose of your old casino chips. They could be worth much more than you could’ve imagined. Some chips are sold for as much as $70,000. As long as you have your casino chips appropriately preserved, you can be sure it is worth some money in the market (although this could only be a few dollars instead of thousands).
If you happen to come across a casino chip from a defunct casino, you might be able to sell it for a good amount of money. Alternatively, you can keep it for some years and sell it off when the value has skyrocketed. Either way, right old casino chips are immensely valuable and highly coveted.
Frequently Asked Questions:
- What’s the maximum amount of money that can be exchanged for a poker chip? There’s absolutely no limit to this, as long as the casino room can provide casino chips equal to the value of the money. There are known high-value poker chips ranging from $5,000 to a whopping $25,000. These are mainly seen in rich and professional poker plays.
- Can my poker chips be used at any casino? Yes. Although you’d have to go through scrutinizing verifications to ascertain:
Even with all these, it’s not always a good transaction to the casino room as chips can only be cashed in ONLY at the casino it was issued.
Are Old Poker Chips Worth Anything 2019
- How do casinos identify fake casino chips? After intense physical scrutiny and checking the chips against the known casino standard weight, the casino organizers go ahead to check for the embedded microchip and use UV rays to identify their unique markers on the casino chip.
When all these aren’t identified, the chip is confirmed as fake.
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