If I Find a Casino Chip on the Floor, Is It Mine To Keep?

 

You might think that the answer to this question would be unambiguous, but in fact it's something of a gray area, since it isn't actually covered by law.

 

Although all chips and tokens are officially the property of the casino that issued them and thus in theory should be returned if found, in practice it seems that if someone has exchanged cash for a chip, then lost that chip, the application of that rule becomes somewhat hazy.

 

The only applicable provision of the Nevada State Gaming Control Board's Regulation 12 governing chips and tokens states, "A licensee shall not redeem its chips or tokens if presented by a person who the licensee knows or reasonably should know is not a patron of its gaming establishment" (12.060). This appears to put the onus on the casino to figure out whether you'd gambled there when you found the bounty and if so, it seemingly doesn't apply whether or not you won that specific chip.

 

We called the Gaming Control Board in an attempt to get some kind of official line on this, only to be told the law of "finders keepers" pretty much applies in such instances.

 

Of course, the casino would prefer you to hand in the chip, so it doesn't have to cash it. But the only time that Regulation 12.060 will come into effect is if the chip is of a relatively high denomination in terms of the establishment norm (i.e., $500 might catch the attention of a downtown cage, but it might take a $1,000 chip to arouse any suspicion at the big Strip casinos). If the casino suspects that a large chip isn't yours, then the cage is within its rights to question where and when you won it and would be able to verify this from the records at the table where you might claim to have gotten it. But if it's a chip worth $100 or less, it's much harder for them to trace, since so many of them are in play at any time and it probably wouldn't be considered worth the time or effort to verify ownership.

 

When we checked with the security departments at various casinos to see what their in-house policy was in practice, we found that it varied from property to property. Some agreed with the "finders-keepers" rule, while others insisted it's "mandatory" that you hand over what you find to security.

 

That's fine in theory and/or as policy (and in some casino guard's fantasy), but how can security know for sure whether you're picking up a chip that you dropped yourself or one that you just happened to spot on the floor? And how would the person at the cage know whether you found it or won it?

 

If you do hand it in, also in theory, if the chip remains unclaimed after a certain period of time (anything from 15-60 days, we found), it's yours to keep.

 

To conclude, although the casinos we spoke with did not appear to have stringent negative policies in place with regard to keeping money or chips found on the floor or elsewhere, other properties may take a dimmer view of this. The practice of "silver mining" or "slot walking" (deliberately scouting the machines for money or tickets inadvertently left behind) is generally looked on as lowlife behavior and in some casinos is specifically forbidden.