1. Poker Chips For Sale
2. Poker Chip Collector Case
3. Poker Chip Collection
4. Poker Chip Collector Book

Collecting Chips Many players like to keep poker chips as souvenirs of their visit to a casino. Not only is this legal, but the casinos love it when you do this. Some commemorative chips from the. Collectors have a focus on their aesthetics, especially the novel designs and color combinations. Those that collect chips know they have both intrinsic value and a collection value, especially when they are phased out in favor of new design. Harley-Davidson's® Poker Chip Collectors Frame 6927 is the perfect way to display these treasures.

• The chip collecting arena – and the poker collectibles market in general – is vast. Chips from the illegal casinos of Newport, Kentucky, have a devoted fan base, just as books on poker, it’s great players, and its rules, are sought after by professional players and bookworms alike.
• Casino chip collecting is the practice of intentionally taking casino chips (also called 'checks') from Casino premises or trading or collecting online, or in person, for the purpose of collection. Casino chip collecting is a variety of exonumia, or coin collecting.

Coin collectors don’t collect just coins. Many have caught the collecting bug and put together assemblies of all sorts of different items. Here’s a short history of poker chips and those who collect them.

The history of poker chips goes back a good 100 years. Today’s poker chips are mostly made out of synthetic materials, but historically chips have come in a large selection of materials, layouts and qualities.

Betting and playing games for money is not a new pastime. Gambling activities are described in old relics of most of the ancient cultures that are known to the world.

Gambling chips made out of bone and wood

Early chips would typically be made of bone, ivory, mother of pearl or even wood. And why not, those were the materials that were available, and mass production wasn’t an issue yet.

Today’s poker chips are often made of plastic. Modern chips typically have some more or less complex graphics hot-stamped on the surface. Sometimes slits have been engraved in the surface to the chips stack easier.

Poker Chips For Sale

More expensive chips were made of clay composite, giving them a nice touch and greater weight, in short a more luxurious feeling. A brass core or steel inlay brings us to the high end of poker chips. The one where collectors of poker chips tend to look first.Chips to replace cash and other valuables

Many gadgets have been used to symbolize fate in gambling games. Way back, mysterious stones and symbolic charts filled this role, later many variations of wheels, cards and dice were used.

The betting was often performed using ready money like coins or bills, but other items carrying a real value have been used such as small gems or golden nuggets.

Of course, handling those items entails difficulty for both players and casino staff. They often have no well defined value, and the total value of a heap of golden nuggets cannot easily be assessed by either opponents or management.

With chips and tokens being used instead of cash or valuable items, it’s easier to tell how much someone has bet. In a poker tournament, having a decent picture of each opponent’s stack is essential for well-informed decisions.

Poker chips as collector’s items

Custom-made poker chips are a part of the brand of any respectable poker room, and many players collect poker chips. They keep them as souvenirs from all the places they’ve played at, or just because they like to collect.

The list of classical casinos is long. The Mirage, the Bellagio, the Taj Mahal or even Aviation Club de France on the Champs-Elysees in Paris. Showing your grandchildren proof that you were there and played cards is another reason to collect them. With time and a little effort, the collection in itself can grow into a full-fledged complement to the adventure of being there.

Games of skill require and lucky tokens

Poker chips and other gaming tokens are commonly used for good luck charms by poker players. Coins designed for special events are also popular, such as the golden World Series of Poker commemoratives.

Poker players are often a little superstitious. It’s important to bring their lucky items to the table to help them win. Bringing along the chip that won you that big tournament in The Bicycle ten years ago or the chip that you won from Phil Hellmuth before he took off into the poker hall of fame might be the key to your next big win.

Poker chips have a long history and make fun collectors items. Just be sure to put one in your pocket before you lose them all!

(Note: This post was submitted and written by PokerListings.com)

Ed. note: For those who might have missed it before, we're reprising Robert Woolley's series of articles for poker players who are new to live poker. The series is great for newcomers, and likely useful as well to those with experience playing in casinos and poker rooms.

This article concludes my three-part survey of the rules and procedures surrounding poker chips in brick-and-mortar casinos. In the first part, I discussed the complicated relationship between chips and money, chip colors, stacking chips, and other rules regarding chips. In the second part, I covered some things to think about when calling, betting, or raising with chips.

Today I want to finish the discussion by considering a variety of other chip-related topics. All of the following points apply equally to tournaments and cash games.

The 'Oversize Chip Rule'

It often happens that you want to call a bet but don't have a combination of chips that will match it exactly. For example, you want to limp in by just calling the amount of the $2 big blind, but you have only $5 chips. If you say nothing and just put out one red chip, it's potentially unclear whether your intention is to just call (expecting the dealer to give you $3 in change) or to raise to a $5 bet.

The 'oversize chip rule' (a.k.a. the 'one-chip rule') resolves this ambiguity in advance by declaring that a single chip larger than needed to constitute a call is nevertheless deemed to be just a call unless you have verbally announced a raise before putting the chip out.

Note that this isn't an issue when the overage is not enough to constitute a raise anyway, e.g., if you call a $4 bet with a $5 chip. The rule is also not invoked when you put out more than one chip. For example, if you are facing a bet of $15 and put out two green ($25) chips, nobody could mistakenly think that you intended to just call. Where there is no ambiguity, there is no need for a rule to resolve it.

Once in a while, a player new to casino poker believes that this rule should not be applied if he has small-denomination chips such that he could have used them if his intention were to call rather than raise. For example, he puts out a $5 as the first player to act after the blinds in a $1/$2 no-limit game. When the dealer, following the rule, declares this to be just a $2 call, the player might protest, pointing to the large stack of $1 chips that he could have used if he had wanted to just call.

This argument is never considered valid. The rule goes by what was actually done, not by what could have been done.

Handling Chips

I'm not a germophobe, but I do try to keep an awareness of which objects in my environment are reasonably clean and which are not. Casino chips, to put it bluntly, are filthy.

I prefer handling chips as little as possible, and advise you to do the same. Nobody knows for sure, but it stands to reason that poker chips could serve as a vector for transmitting cold and flu viruses from one player to the entire table. I, for one, would like to minimize the risk of being on the receiving end of such a 'gift.'

Chip Tricks

You will often see poker veterans playing with their chips in interesting ways. They will shuffle chip stacks one-handed, run them over their knuckles, flip them like tiddlywinks, bounce them perfectly onto a target, and so on.

Though I can appreciate the time and effort it takes to master such tricks, I have no interest in learning to do them myself, and my advice to you is not to waste your time and energy, either. It's a distraction from what you should be paying attention to.

Also, you may unconsciously give off 'tells' this way. Chip-shuffling players are notorious for slowing down — without being aware of it — when they have a monster hand.

Finally, if you spend much time in a large poker tournament room, the 'white noise' of hundreds of players mindlessly shuffling their chips may remind you of cicada season and make you want to vow not to contribute to the din.

Poker Chip Collector Case

Small Denominations

When playing a in a $1/$2 game, I like keeping at least five or ten $1 chips in my stack at all times. That way, I can bet any exact amount I want to without having to make a verbal announcement of the amount, or call another player's bet without forcing the dealer to make change for me in the middle of a hand. The reason for that is just that I don't want to be distracted by such details when I'm trying to focus on what my opponents are doing and making my best decisions.

If I have less than five or ten small chips, I'll rebuild my supply by paying a couple of round of blinds with larger chips and getting change from the dealer. This, of course, isn't a rule or even a standard practice or point of etiquette — just a practical hint that you might find helpful.

Making Change

Sometimes another player or even the dealer will ask you to make change — e.g., exchange five $1 chips for one $5 chip, or whatever. Helping out this way when asked is not only perfectly acceptable, but a nice bit of social lubrication to keep the game friendly and moving efficiently. Just be sure that you count both the chips you're giving and those you're receiving, so that both parties concur that the trade is being done fairly.

Poker Chip Collection

Particularly when doing an exchange with another player, be as open as you can be about the counting of chips, both verbally and visually. That way, neither the other players nor casino security personnel observing the game through overhead cameras are given any reason to think that unethical 'chip dumping' is taking place.

Collecting Chips

Many players like to keep poker chips as souvenirs of their visit to a casino. Not only is this legal, but the casinos love it when you do this.

When they put into circulation chips with colorful designs commemorating this, that, and the other thing, they earnestly hope that you will take the chips home without cashing them out, resulting in pure profit to the casino. It's the same principle as the post office printing stamps that they hope you will purchase, then place in an album rather than on an envelope, giving them revenue without having to provide a service in exchange.

If you like collecting chips, feel free to do so. It can be fun to see how many different ones you can accumulate. Be aware, however, that, like most collecting hobbies, it can suck you in and drain your bank account if you let it get out of control.

Whew! Three whole articles just about poker chips! I hope it has been a worthwhile excursion into a subject that isn't discussed much, but is actually central to how casino poker games operate.

Next we will move on to tackle another category of poker table equipment, also sometimes confusing to the new player — all of the many forms of 'buttons' that are used.

Robert Woolley lives in Asheville, NC. He spent several years in Las Vegas and chronicled his life in poker on the 'Poker Grump' blog.

Poker Chip Collector Book

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