Chips: Handle Them with Care
The mainstream of genuine casino tokens are "clay" chips however it may be best described as compression die chips. Opposing traditional belief, gaming chips, even those used during the 50' are not 100% made out of clay. What we have today is a product of combining materials that are sturdier than clay. No less than a little proportion of the token is made up of material like sand, chalk, calcium carbonate, or ordinary clay. How these chips are made is with confidentiality, time consuming, quite expensive, and unique due to manufacturing preference. Additionally, the perimeter spots or inserts, as commonly called, are not tinted on as it appears. Actually, some of these tokens have undergone some repairs specially those edges that are chipped off; it is done manually by hand by fixing new clay of a different color. Afterwards, the token is then put under tremendous pressure and heat up to a temperature just about 10,000 psi at 300 °F hence the expression "compression molded Chips".
The inlays are the printed graphics found on the surface of the clay chips. Inlays are normally of paper material wrapped with a thin-coated plastic and then applied on the surface of the token before undergoing the solidity molding process. The inlays are permanently attached to the token and can never be and can not be taken out from the token less you destroy it.
Ceramic chips like those manufactured Nevada Jacks and ChipCo International were launched in the market in the mid 80's. These chips serve as a substitute to clay chips are still found in almost all casinos.
The Bud Jones brand of injections-cast plastic tokens employed used in casinos. They are produced by Gaming Partners International is the sole distributor of this product and is not for home market.
North American and Canadian casinos utilized chips that exceed 10 grams and normally weigh around are 8.5 grams to 10 grams. Tokens have no mandatory or official weight, but a few numbers, in particular the coin inlaid tokens, weigh up more.
Those chips sold at malls and are for home consumptions have different weights, some weighing more than 12 grams depending on the brand name.
Regular drawings for home use chips represent the six sides of a dice or the suit signs around the edging on the surface of the token. These tokens are normally produced with injection cast technology by means of ABS plastic. Several chips are molded throughout a small metal compact disk, named a slug, for load.
European chips frequently appear in Mother of Pearl. Chip that hold a higher value are sometimes fashioned like plaques.