Can You Take Poker Chips Home
Welcome To Apache Poker Chips. Apache Poker Chips has been operating in Las Vegas since 1999. Being located in Las Vegas gives us the opportunity to play with and review all new products as soon as they become available. We sell the same chips and cards used at the top Casinos around the world. Take them home, keep them as souvenirs, give them to your friends, we don’t care. Because if you take them with you, we get to keep your money interest free until you bring them back. And of course if you lose them, then that’s on you.
If you are interested to get the best rakeback deals and private promotions on poker sites head on to PokerPro website (PS: there are plenty of options to choose from also for the USA players).
After winning a game of poker at your local casino, it is expected that you cash in your chips before leaving. So what happens if you don’t want to?
What if you want to cash in on your wins another day? Are you allowed to take your chips home or do you absolutely have to cash in on them before you leave the casino? Read on to find out about the rules that govern the use of poker chips in and outside a casino.
Can you take poker chips fromcasinos? Yes, you’re allowed to take away poker chips from a casino. You canbring them back another day to cash in on or even keep them as souvenirs.Unfortunately, poker chips can expire, and if you take too long to cash in yourchips, they may become completely worthless.
So what happens if a personwalks in with stolen poker chips? Howabout if people counterfeit poker chips and try to cash in on them claiming tohave won them at an earlier date? There are several measures casinos have takento ensure they are not defrauded with fake chips.
Why Casinos Allow Players Take Home Poker Chips
Most people expect stricter rules guiding the movement of poker chips in and out of a casino, but are surprised to find that anyone can take home their chips if they want to. The reason behind this is quite simple and I’ll be explaining it below.
Poker Chips Security
Casinos have put in measures to ensure that people can’t falsely claim to own poker chips they stole or present counterfeit chips. If you return on a later date to cash in on your chips, you’ll be put through a thorough verification process to ensure you are indeed the owner of the chips.
In the case of counterfeit chips, it’s actually harder than most people imagine. Poker chips are made in such a way that they feature the same design, color, and weight. Also, each chip is marked with special markings that are only visible under UV light.
Higher denominations even have tracking devices embedded.
When a casino is trying to ascertain if a chip is real or not, they inspect the chips to see if it’s the same model as the standard chips.
Also, they can ask for your membership card to prove that you truly won those chips at the casino. With these stringent verification rules, it’s next to impossible for people to play a fast one on casinos.
Not all Chips Make it Back
One good reason casinos are happy to let you take their chips home is that they know a small fraction of chips that leave the casino never make it back. Some people might lose their chips, others could decide to keep them.
The result is that the casino gets to keep the monetary value of the chips that never returns. Another thing the casino knows is that chips have expiry dates. This means there’s a good chance some chips won’t return to the casino until it’s already too late to redeem.
If you want to read more when and how do chips expire, then find out more in this article.
Chips no Longer Good asCurrency
Back in the days, poker chips were the ultimate currency around casinos and gamblers. Since just about anyone could redeem a chip, people were able to pay off debt, give donations and get haircuts with poker chips as payments.
This directly contrasted federal law that says that no other form of currency should be allowed in the country. To help enforce this, the state of Nevada passed a law that made it illegal for anyone to treat poker chips as real money.
This meant a lot of people could no longer redeem the chips they got from third parties and they were required by casinos to show proof that the chips they presented were indeed gotten from the casino.
If you do accept chips from people as a form of payment and try to cash it in, the casino authorities reserve the right to confiscate your chips until you can adequately prove they are yours.
Why Chips Have Expiry Dates
It would seem strange that chips have expiry dates. It’s not like they become toxic or automatically explode once they expire, so why do chips have expiry dates?
The whole expiry date conundrum came into being when the state of Nevada issued regulation 12 which branded chips with expiry dates and forbade players from treating them as a kind of currency.
These regulations were issued to ensure poker chips were not used as an official currency aside from the US dollar.
Expiry dates are determined by each casino and they could range from a few months to years. Once a poker chip has expired, it becomes totally worthless. Players will be unable to cash them in and casinos transfer their expired chips to companies who handle chip disposal. Ultimately, the chips are destroyed with a tumbler and new chips are issued.
Do Casinos allow Poker chips from other Casinos?
There’s no rule that says a casino has to accept poker chips from other casinos, but they generally do. This is especially true when the casinos are owned by the same companies.
If you’re going to cash in your chips at another casino, you should be ready to produce evidence that you indeed won those chips from a game. To do this, you should be able to provide a player’s card that shows you’re telling the truth. Also, casinos will check for markers on your chips to ensure you have no outstanding issues with the casinos you got them from. These markers are used to check for players who have outstanding bets to settle.
While smaller denominations can be exchanged for house chips without much fuss, higher denominations like $1k chips might not be easily accepted if accepted at all. At the end of the day, all chips are cashed in at the casino they were created.
This means a foreign casino will need to send the foreign chips to its parent casino to cash it in. The stress and cost of getting someone to go cash in foreign chips is one reason many casinos would rather not accept your foreign chips.
Final Thoughts
If for any reason you’re nursing the idea of coming back home with the chips you won at a casino, you’re completely free to do so.
Casinos don’t stop anyone from leaving with their chips and you can always come back to cash them in on a later date. Is it a wise choice? That depends. If you’re taking a couple of chips home as a souvenir, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
If you do plan on cashing them in on a later date, you need to be careful to avoid losing the money you won. Before leaving the casino, inquire about the expiry dates of your chips. You don’t want to show up in a few months only to learn that your chips have expired.
When you take them home, keep in a safe place to avoid misplacing them. When you’re ready to cash them in, be sure to go along with your player’s card to show that you got them legally.
Related Question
What kind of chips do casinos use? Casinos use ceramic chips. They are otherwise referred to as clay composite or just clay. In truth, they are not made of clay at all. They are made with a unique resin or plastic that has similar qualities with ceramic.
What do I do if I find a chip on the floor? While most people might pocket chips they found on the floor, many casinos have rules which state that casinos found on the floor are properties of the casino. While you may not be arrested for pocketing a chip you found on the floor, they may actually kick you out for it.
Related Articles
- How many poker chips do you need? A complete guide
- Are poker chips magnetic?
- Are casino chips microchipped?
If you are interested to get the best rakeback deals and private promotions on poker sites head on to PokerPro website (PS: there are plenty of options to choose from also for the USA players).
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.
What 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.
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.
- 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.
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:
Best Home Poker Chips
- Ownership of the chip
- Outstanding markers/debt with the casino you got the chips from.
- The expiration date of the chip
- Your player’s card to ensure you won the casino chip during a game.
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.
- 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.