Travis, its certainly possible that someone could be selling fantasy chips and not honestly know that they are not true casino chips. But, I'd believe that those instances are very infrequent. There was a similar long discussion thread about this same subject, on Prodigy a few months ago. At that time, the seller was offering the imitation Dunes chips, and was clearly trying to mislead the potential bidders on EBay, as the seller of those was (and is) a very active dealer in Las Vegas chips. At that time, I notified some EBay bidders to the fact of the imitation chips, and received a couple of very nice letters from them, thanking me for informing them. Offering such information might result in one new chip collector joining the hobby. But, if we keep quiet about it and let the bidder get "taken", then that person might learn of it later and really be turned off about chip collecting. I can only applaud Bob G. for taking the initial action of writing to listed bidders on the Casino de Isthmus chips.
I won't comment at length about roulettes, perhaps that should be discussed under a different topic anyway, as it is entirely different from misrepresenting a chip in an auction. But, Archie made several excellent points, and the one that sticks in mind is about the Atlantic City casino that ordered all new chipco roulettes with pretty pictures on them. The casino people are not dummies. They had to order those with the thought in mind that collectors would like those chips. Someone in this thread suggested that roulette collecting be a topic of discussion at one of the meetings at the convention. In such a discussion, it
might be interesting to hear from the CC&GTCC Treasurer, who was a casino pit boss for many years until retiring just two weeks ago.