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There’s a good chance you’ve pocketed a casino chip at some point and forgotten about it. Maybe it’s sitting in a junk drawer with old keys and takeout menus. Maybe you found a small stack in a relative’s belongings after they passed. Most of those chips are worth exactly their face value, which is nothing because they’re from casinos that no longer honor them, or just a few dollars to a casual collector. But some of them are worth considerably more, and most people have no idea the market exists.
Casino chip collecting is a genuine hobby with an established collector community, standardized grading, and published price guides. The category has a name in the numismatic world: exonumia. Five things determine whether a chip has any collector value: rarity, the casino it came from, visual appeal (a chip with a picture inlay beats a simple text stamp every time), the mold pattern pressed into the chip’s edge, and condition. Las Vegas chips command the highest prices. Nevada chips are second. Everything else is lower, with some notable exceptions…