{"id":6477,"date":"2013-11-06T02:45:27","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T02:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/2013\/11\/06\/where-do-poker-chips-go-to-die\/"},"modified":"2013-11-06T02:45:27","modified_gmt":"2013-11-06T02:45:27","slug":"where-do-poker-chips-go-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/2013\/11\/06\/where-do-poker-chips-go-to-die\/","title":{"rendered":"Where do poker chips go to die?"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\"\"
\n\tObsolete chips from Burbon St Casino and Binions<\/span><\/p>\n

\tAll poker chips expire.<\/p>\n

\tBut unlike with sour milk in a fridge, casino bosses choose when chips go bad. It can be months, years or decades after they are issued.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cIt\u2019s a personal choice,\u201d said Mark Lipparelli, a gaming consultant and former chairman of the Gaming Control Board.<\/p>\n

\tCaesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts International recently ran newspaper ads warning people that the chips used in several of their casinos will be discontinued in six months. After that, anyone holding onto them will be out of luck.<\/p>\n

\tExpired chips lose their face value. Gaming regulators made the law in the late \u201980s to try to cut down on fraud and counterfeiting.<\/p>\n

\tSpinettis Gaming Supplies<\/p>\n

\tLaunch slideshow \u00bb
\n\tBefore 1987, the state didn\u2019t care much about what casinos did with their chips. Today, the process is very different.<\/p>\n

\t\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n

\tMike Spinetti has the largest collection of poker chips in Las Vegas and maybe the world.<\/p>\n

\tThe poker player and poker chip expert keeps more than $15 million of rare chips in a secret warehouse vault. His favorite is a Flamingo chip from 1947 \u2013 Bugsy Siegel\u2019s era. Spinetti snagged it at an estate sale.<\/p>\n

\tHe\u2019s constantly on the hunt for chips with an interesting story.<\/p>\n

\tAt Spinettis Gaming Supplies on South Commerce Street, Spinetti has chips damaged by fire, never-before-seen chips found in forgotten vaults and chips discarded at the bottom of lakes. Casino companies used to toss discontinued chips into bodies of water to get rid of them.<\/p>\n

\tClose to 20 years ago, Spinetti received a call from a skin diver who found white poker chips buried at the bottom of Lake Mead.<\/p>\n

\tSpinetti snatched them up and learned they came from the Las Vegas Club. The casino used them for play in 1957, but it\u2019s unclear when executives threw them overboard. The casino rolled out new chips in 1963 and 1971.<\/p>\n

\tThe chips weren\u2019t originally white. They were gray, but the lake\u2019s water sucked the color from their rims.<\/p>\n

\tSpinetti also has several chunks of concrete believed to have come from the foundation of the New Frontier, which was demolished in 2007. The chunks are riddled with poker chips from the Sands and metal tokens from resorts as far away as Laughlin.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cWhen chips became not current, casinos didn\u2019t know what to do with them,\u201d Spinetti said. \u201cI have no idea who started it, but they\u2019d go into the concrete.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tWhen construction crews demolished the Dunes in 1993, workers found hundreds of $100 chips preserved in the crumbled concrete of the resort\u2019s foundation.<\/p>\n

\tMGM spokesman Alan Feldman remembers the day a worker discovered the chips while cleaning up the site, where Steve Wynn later built the Bellagio. The worker presented executives with a 5-gallon bucket of chip-laden slabs. Feldman displays one on his desk today.<\/p>\n

\tThe motives behind the chip burying are unclear. Some say casino executives poured the chips in concrete for good luck. Others say their motives were pragmatic. They needed to toss the old chips somewhere.<\/p>\n

\t\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n

\tEverything changed in 1987.<\/p>\n

\tThat\u2019s when the state rolled out Regulation 12, a law that made poker chips the property of casinos, prohibited gamblers from using chips as currency and required executives to destroy discontinued chips in a specific regulated manner.<\/p>\n

\tThe law stemmed from regulators\u2019 fears about theft and fraud. Regulation 12 aims to prevent counterfeit chips from entering casinos.<\/p>\n

\tThe casinos were happy to play ball because it saved them money. Resorts can\u2019t be taxed on unreturned chips.<\/p>\n

\tSome players scoffed, however, because the law prevented them from paying back debts with chips. Regulation 12 specifies that chips can be used only as a substitute for cash while gambling, not as currency away from the tables.<\/p>\n

\tWhen players cash in chips today, cashiers are supposed to ask them for their player\u2019s card to prove the chips were earned gambling. If a person can\u2019t prove where he got them, the cage can refuse to cash them. State law allows a casino to refuse to cash chips if it \u201cknows or reasonably should know\u201d a person didn\u2019t get the chips while gambling.<\/p>\n

\tTom Peterman, senior vice president of MGM Resorts International, said that happens a couple of times a month.<\/p>\n

\t\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n

\tWhen they decide to roll out a new chip, casino companies must submit plans to the Gaming Control Board, detailing the chip\u2019s design and security features, as well as the casino\u2019s plan for disposing of the old chips.<\/p>\n

\tChips typically include covert security features, such as ultraviolet markings and radio frequency identification tags, that cashiers can check for to make sure the chips are valid.<\/p>\n

\tTo destroy chips, casinos must consult with a board-approved disposal company. Sometimes it\u2019s the same company that made the chips. Gaming Partners International, which supplies most casinos with chips, for instance, often destroys them, too.<\/p>\n

\tOutdated chips typically are loaded into a truck equipped with a tumbler that crushes them into dust.<\/p>\n

\tGaming regulators have to be present to run an audit and witness the destruction.<\/p>\n

\tOriginal article from LV Sun http:\/\/www.vegasinc.com\/news\/2013\/nov\/05\/where-do-poker-chips-go-die-look-lake-mead-and-cas\/?_ga=1.224960666.1465890254.1380849505<\/a><\/p>\n

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Replies:<\/h3>\n

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Obsolete chips from Burbon St Casino and Binions All poker chips expire. But unlike with sour milk in a fridge, casino bosses choose when chips go bad. It can be months, years or decades after they are issued. \u201cIt\u2019s a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-casino-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}