The sign is clear, not to be used for monetary purposes. It's all about the casinos minting their own currency and the Feds. Otherwise we would be using only US coins in the slots.

The chips are property of the casino. That doesn't mean we are stealing them, or that the casino can't allow us to take them home. It's the casinos property.

You can argue that people who collect ashtrays are in the same group, because those are all stolen property.

How about swizzle sticks, did someone sell it to you or did you take it home.

Lets not get silly.

The casino encourages people to take home chips and tokens. What you can't do is use them for paying a bill at the coffee shop, or play them at a different casino. But if you drop them on the table, elsewhere, they are immediatly changed into that casinos chips.

Watch the cage where someone will be picked out foreign tokens and removing them from play. The coin receptors with the new electronic recognition won't take some tokens from other casinos now. Playing a token from a casino other than the one who issued it, would be the same as slugging a machine. Are they going to arrest you for that?

Go back to the simple answer. The chips are property of the casino and intended for gambling purposes only. The regulations are a directive for the way a casino handles them.

A collector taking one home, isn't breaking the law.