Casino Chip Collecting: How to Determine the Value of Casino Chips

Casino chip collecting has really taken off in the last ten years or so and with the increase in interest, prices paid for casino chips have also gone up. About twenty years ago, casino chips rarely sold for more than $100. Now, though, collectable poker chips can carry four- and even five-digit price tags. As with any collectible, rarity and condition go into determining a casino chip's value, but there's more to it than that. If your thinking about starting a collection or wondering about the value of those poker chips you forgot to cash in at the casino last time, here are some tips on finding out how much a casino chip is worth.

Get a price guide
The best way to get an accurate idea of the monetary value of your chips is to look them up in a price guide published by the Casino Chip & Gaming Tokens Collectors Club (CC and GTCC). This price guide, the Official U.S. Casino Chip Price Guide, is the only comprehensive guide to U.S. casino chip prices. For die-hard collectors, the CC and GTCC publishes a quarterly magazine, Casino Chip and Token News, which also contains tips on appraising casino chips. If you specialize in chips from one or just a few U.S. states, there are also price guides available for individual states. These are easier to find in Midwesterm and Western states. If you're just getting interested in casino chip collecting and aren't ready to invest in a price guide yet, you can get a feel for how much your chips are worth at Web sites like www.chipguide.com. Online guides can help you find pricing information on chips from around the world, too. Keep in mind that these buying guides aren't just for looking up the value of the chips you already have. When you go out to buy more poker chips for your collection, the guides will help you tell genuine chips apart from the fakes.

Of course, there's a logic that goes into determining the value of the casino chips listed into those price guides. Here are some factors that affect how much a poker chip might be worth.