http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=725260763&rd=1

I have some objections to this “Nevada Jacks, Las Vegas” set. At the outset let me say that I can’t ascribe any untoward motives to the makers of the chips.

I doubt that most people will buy this as a playing set, because:
(1) it consists of five denominations, each denomination having 100 chips. There are 500 chips; how many players need 100 $100 chips in a set like this? Most of the playing sets I have seen are made something like this -- 50% of the chips are the lowest denomination, 25% the next denomination and 25% for the remaining denominations – say 250 are 50 cents, 125 are $1, and 125 are $5 and $25.
(2) The name on the chips is “Nevada Jacks, Las Vegas.” If someone were paying about $1 per chip (the price at their web site) for 500 chips, wouldn’t he want his name and home-town, say, on the chips, not Nevada Jacks Las Vegas? For $500 he could get personalized inlaid chips.

More likely most buyers of these chips will buy them to sell as real casino chips at flea markets and antique shows, because:
(1) they are sold in even sets of five denominations.
(2) They don’t seem like advertising chips. All the advertising chips I have ever seen had the address and/or phone number on them, and usually a tag line about the quality of the product.
(3) These chips, if poker chips, should have had a tag line on them so they wouldn’t be confused as real casino chips, maybe something like “honoring an old-time gambler” or casino, so no one would mistake them as casino chips.

In conclusion, I think it is wrong to make poker chips or advertising chips that look like casino chips. It is unnecessary. The chance for confusion and/or fraud exists when a casino-like name is put on a casino-like mold chip with the name of a real location. I don’t want to suggest universal rules that would cover every case, and the Club didn’t before (re: the Paulson Cuban commemorative “poker chips”), so why expect it now?

Robert