Hi Jill,

You'd think that a casino closing would make a chip obsolete.

The Silver Hawk casino in Black Hawk Colorado closed for 4 years beginning in 1992. They still had the original issue chips sitting in the vault of the closed casino. The property was bought in 1996. The new owners sought a gaming license that didn't change the name of the property, and given that all of those chips were still sitting in the casino's vault, they resubmitted the chips to the CO Gaming Commission for approval for use in the "new" casino. Gaming said yes to the $5 chips, but rejected the $1 chips because they weren't "primarily white" enough this time around. ......so what happened was some people paid as much as $200 for a $5 "obsolete" chip that was put back into play after four years of the casino being closed, and we had a gaming commission that not only didn't know or care about collectors, they couldn't be consistent on their own standards by first approving the Silver Hawk $1 chip and rejecting it the second time around.

There has been speculation since that incident about chips from Lilly Belle's in Black Hawk, which closed a little more than 7 years ago. It was well known that the vault in this closed casino also held the house rack of chips. Last month, it was announced that CO Gaming destroyed the Lilly Belle's vault inventory of chips and tokens, making a repeat of the Silver Hawk incident impossible.

Bottom line, if local gaming commissions aren't required by law to require a change in ownership of a casino property that has been legally closed and out of business to issue a new rack of chips to reopen the property, it could happen again.

I suspect the reasons for the destruction of the Lilly Belle's chips were a result of pressure put on the gaming commission by one or two Colorado CCGTCC chapter members who have been gaming enforcement officers from the beginning of legalized gaming in Colorado, but I can't say that for sure. It has taken some time to educate the CO Gaming Commission on our area of collecting....when the Lodge was selling their GO set for way over face value, Lee Bruton brought a sampling of his collection to a monthly CO Gaming Commission meeting to show them that people collect chips. One of the commission members thought that his collection should have been confiscated because he didn't have the right to own the chips! ....we've come a long way since then, I HOPE!

Bob