I recognize that they are different. However the purpose for the claim of ownership may be for similar reasons. While you do buy the chips, if a casino has evidence that you are abusing the use of them or have obtained them wrongfully or fraudulently their claim might allow them the opportunity to force you to forfit them on demand. As for your comment about LEs, That was sort of what I was trying to point out when I mentioned the need for evidence of some reason to confiscate. The purpose and methods of acquisition of LEs is such that, as you say, a casino would have a very hard time to prove some wrong doing with them that would warrent their forfiture.

Here are a couple of examples of my point. If you have normal chips that you properly purchased from the cage, say $500 worth, and they accumulate evidence that you were using those chips to play their games and you were cheating or committing some other fraudulant act with them. Would the casino have the legal right to sieze those chips as their property. Say they take your chips and you now have $5000. If there is proof that you bought $500 they may have to cash you out for those. However, do they have to pay you the full $5000 or can they keep the other $4500 on the grounds that they are their property and you did not acquire them properly. Here is another one that I read on a BB somewhere. Someone is at a craps table and the dealer overpays them. Another member of the crewe(?) spots the error and asks them to return the chips. The player tells the employee to go to H***. Can they force him to return the chips or since they are in the players posession are they his property? If I recall correctly, the resolution of the incident was as follows. The overpayment was $200. The player had two ninety some dollar bets on 6 and 8. Rather than continue the fight, the Boss(?) ordered that the bets be taken down and put in the bank. I guess the casino still lost a few bucks on it but the question becomes whose chips were those that were on the bets. The players or the casinos. Who Owned them?

My point is only that maybe the casinos claim of property is just their way of legally having some control over the use or outcome of the chips. Since the chips are their property and not legal tender, they can not be redemed at another casino and the casino only has an obligation on their own chips, they do not have to be redemed for cash if there is reasonable belief that they were improperly obtained and if the casino finds themselves in a position where they do not have adequate numbers of chips they can either demand their return or retire them and refuse to honor them under legal means as they are their property to dispose of. Thus they give the redemption notice declaring that the chips are their property and they want them back and if they are not returned by such and such a date they will no longer honor their value. The delcaration of property may not have anything to do with the possession of chips outside of the casino, in the hands of collectors. It may only have to do with controling their use in the casino and the casinos obligation to honor them when they do walk.