On July 8th, David Moore offered up a group of chips for sale that included a chip with the name Casablanca Casino on it. On the flip, someone had written “Moscow” but the chip bore a strong resemblance to chips from the Casablanca Casino in Aruba, my collecting area. There were some notable differences. The word, “Aruba” did not appear on this chip. The denomination was a simple “5” without a currency symbol such as a dollar sign. Even if this proved to be a Russian chip, or from somewhere else, I wanted the chip for my collection due to it’s similarities.

The original Paulson chips (the chip on the right is from a later order that had a darker pink or possibly a red around the casino name and a very subtly different font - look at the N and the A's):

Next, based upon the artwork on the Paulson chips, Chipco made a few chips for the Casablanca. Here is one:

Here is the presumably Russian chip:

Here, you can see a close up comparison of the casino names:

Here is a close up of the buildings on the Russian chip:

They look exactly the same to me. The similarities had to be more than coincidence. I wrote to David to get the chip and quickly checked the Caribbean Chip Guide. There, I found a similar but notched chip with the notation, “Tournament chip?,” probably due to the lack of a currency symbol.

I wrote to David, who remembered getting it many years ago from Paul Sax in a group of chips from Russia. Debbie Meister offered to help by contacting Chipco for me to inquire about the chip. She also found a Russian site attributing the chip to a casino in Moscow, and showing a chip in pristine condition. Still, I wondered why the chip looked so similar to the Aruba chips. Could it be a chip that the Aruba Casino intended to use, but never had delivered? Or after the artwork was created, decided on another chip for the same purpose? Soon after Debbie’s message, I received a message from someone who identified himself as the Marketing representative of the CEO of Chipco, International, John M. Kendall. Apparently, he reads the Chip Board, at least on that day. He graciously offered to pass on my message to Mr. Kendall. I sent him some scans and explained what I saw and what I wanted to ask.

Within five days, I received a response from Mr. Kendall, quoted by the Marketing rep. Here is what he wrote:

[bold]The first image above is a CHIPCO chip we produced for this casino in Aruba. The second image above is the Paulson clay chip sample the casino supplied us as a guide in designing the CHIPCO rack of chips we made for them.

The 3rd image above is NOT a CHIPCO chip. This is a counterfeit copy that may have been used in a Russian casino we have no idea. The “blue” edge spot addition in the 3rd image above is not uniform and does not match any artwork design CHIPCO has done for any Russian Casinos (we supplied lots of these 600 plus casinos in Russia before they were forced to close).

Counterfeiters are a very clever group today. They employ lots of digital tools to cut and paste images and then reprint them on products of value (like gaming chips).[/bold]

The chip is very smooth and does not feel like any other Chipco chip I own, even very worn chips. Here is an extreme close up of the surface:

I see nothing that contradicts David’s attribution, nor the explanation given by Mr. Kendall. Although very similar, apparently someone liked the Aruba chip design enough to copy it for use in Moscow. I guess the chip needs to be taken off of the Caribbean Chip Guide, but I’m keeping the chip for my collection.

I found it interesting. I hope you did, too.

Michael Siskin