Question of the Day - 28 April 2024

Paris will accept chips from Paris? Of course they will.??

Maybe this was casino lore only, but I recall a discussion whereby church attendees might put a leftover chip or two in the collection plate on Sunday.  At some point a 'runner' from that church would go around to casinos and cash the chips, turn in (?) the cash value to that church.

A casino would refer to them as 'foreign' chips if a player tried to use one that wasn't from that casino. 

All this was likely back in the day of the mega-ownership of casinos.

Candy

As most know gamblers tend to be superstitious, and by extension religious.
Commonly at church casino chips tend to be left in the collection plate.
After all the services are over the monies and chips are sorted.
Then they need to repatriate the chips back to the casino in order to redeem them
For cash. This is done by the chip monks. Hahaha

About 10-15 years ago, I was at Binion's and pulled a $100 chip from Four Queens out of my pocket.  Before I realized what I had done, the dealer told me that since the Four Queens and Binions were owned by the same company she could exchange the Four Queens chips for Binions chips.  She laid out $100 in Binions chips and the $100 chip like it was cash, called over a supervisor to observe, and then when finished instead of putting it in the rack it was dropped into the slot that the $100 bill would normally go.

Exactly...and other charities as well did, and still do, a weekly casino run to cash in chip donations.

Obviously things have changed, but when I worked in Vegas in the 1980s, every casino would accept every other casino's $5 and up chips AS BETS. We called them "foreign" chips and there would be redemption/exchange runs as often as every day.

Back when I mostly played blackjack, I watched a player at Binions pull out half a dozen Plaza dollar chips and ask if he could play them.  The pit boss came over, looked and said "Are they still open?", smiled and said he'd take care of it and converted the chips.  My next trip out, I had the same experience at the Westward Ho, where the player had Stardust chips.  Same result, including the same joke.  I asked if that was common, and the pit boss said it was a service they sometimes provided for their 'best' customers (who frequented the $2 tables I guess).  I can't tell you what the response would be these days, but you'd likely hear the same joke if you tried.

You wrote:  "it's best to cash out your chips when you leave..."
My question:  Who still has chips when they leave? 

Back in the 60s, downtown, before there were the big strip outfits - and long before the FSE - I had a similar incident.  It was apparently not unusual to not cash your chips when you decided to quit.  You could just take 'em with you to wherever you were headed.
I walked across the street and began playing (my game was craps), and the dealer gave a funny look toward the door, saying "is that place still open?"

   All of the stories of the dealers asking "is that place still open?" I find to be funny when you consider that, yes, they are "still open" while all of the dealers who thought they were being funny are now long gone.

Dealers tell good stories and make you laugh (sometimes). Casinos just charge Resort Fees ;).

Back in the '60s and '70s most of the downtown casinos accepted each other's chips. Early in the morning, you could see casino security guards returning the chips, using satchels on hand trucks, to their respective casinos.

...said that back in the 1950's, casino chips circulated all around town like cash.  Everybody accepted them instead of greenbacks.

It all changed when the undercapitalized Royal Nevadan failed.  Evidently, in the weeks before it went under (and was absorbed by the neighboring Stardust), management paid a lot of people in chips and told them to spend them fast.  Naturally, a lot of places got burned when the joint closed and the chips were declared worthless.

Another reason to cash your chips in before you leave is that the casinos themselves will replace their inventory of chips, and give the public 90 days (or something like that) to redeem the old chips.

So you could end up unwittingly having souvenir chips with no cash value squirreled away in a suitcase.

(Yes, I know these are actually cheques - they use chips at the roulette tables.  And you never walk away from the table with roulette chips.  Never.)

I was able to exchange about $60 of non flamingo chips (I believe from some mgm prop) and they gave me the cash as a courtesy