Official Casino Chips

Gambling has been a part of the human experience since before recorded history, but the very first references to gambling come from China, 2000 B.C. Gambling houses and other such establishments have no doubt sprouted up since then. The first legalized gambling house is said to have been in Venice, Italy, in 1625. It wasn't until around the end of the nineteenth century that the casino finally began to see its heyday.

Casino chips or other such gambling tokens weren't used until around the eighteen hundred. Before that, poker players and other gamblers would usually use ordinary money, or token materials such as pieces of gold, coins, or "chips" made out of clay, ivory, bone, paper, or wood.

Today, casino chips are made from either metal, or compression molded clay, and are often customized in design for the particular casino. Normally, chips are blue, red, white, or yellow. Depending on the casino though, chips can come in virtually any color, such as pink or orange. Official casino chips made from 100% clay were not created until the 1950s, and today, these chips are normally made of a mixture of materials that make it more durable than just clay. Part of the composition of any casino chip indubitably has earthen material, such as sand, chalk, or calcium carbonate. In order to avoid counterfeiting though, the manufacture process of most casino chips are kept trade secrets.

The creation of a casino chip is usually expensive and time consuming; most of the markings on a casino chip are not painted on. Rather, in order to create edge spots or inserts on a casino chip, certain areas of the clay are removed, and then replaced with differently colored clay. This can be done either individually, or done in strips before the cylindrical block of molded clay is cut into individual chips.

Printed graphics on a clay chip are usually called inlays. They are typically paper covered or laminated in plastic, applied to the chip before it is compression molded. During the compression molding process, the inlay on a casino chip becomes permanent, and is would no longer be possible to remove it from the chip without destroying the chip itself.

Official casino chips generally have a uniform weight, but the weights generally vary from casino to casino. Casino chips from North American casinos, for example, usually do not weigh more than 10 grams, although there is no official or internationally sanctioned weight for casino chips.