Casino chip collectors embrace their hobby with near-religious zeal

Monday, July 24, 2000 | 10:02 a.m.

Native Las Vegan James Campiglia has always had great interest in Las Vegas' rich resort and gaming industry.

As a boy he collected matchbooks and postcards from the various local resorts. By the time Campiglia reached his teens his fascination with his hometown's No. 1 business drew him to an area of collecting where he was at the time forbidden to go.

But Campiglia was not about to let a little thing like stringent state laws that outlaw minors from hanging around inside casinos prevent him from collecting casino chips from every resort in town.

"I was 16, and me and a friend would dress up like adults and go out to the casinos to see if we could get anyone (casino employees) to sell us chips -- that was half the fun of collecting them," Campiglia, an alumnus of Trinity Christian School, said.

"I saw a lot of history in casino chips and I have always loved the history of Las Vegas. I was one of the first people to intentionally collect casino chips and, for the longest time, I was the youngest."

At age 31 Campiglia boasts a collection of 25,000 casino chips -- half of which he puts up for sale at events such as last weekend's eighth annual Casino Chip and Gaming Token Collectors Club Convention and Show at the Tropicana hotel-casino.

He once got into an auction bidding war with two other collectors and paid more than $10,000 for the rarest chip on the market -- the 1952 $5 Sands Saguaro Cactus issue.

"I had to have that chip because I have a great affection for the Sands," Campiglia said of the Strip resort that was imploded to make way for the Venetian. "My grandfather was a musician who came to Las Vegas to play with Morrey King and his Violins at the Sand's Copa Room."

Campiglia also is the co-author of "The Official U.S. Casino Chip Price Guide," a full-color book that not only gives the market value of vintage chips, but also tells a history of many of the betting devices.

"The factors that make a chip valuable are, of course, the rarity of the issue and also the location (casino) and the aesthetic appeal," Campiglia said.

Like Campiglia, Mike Young, 28, of Salinas, Calif., got started collecting chips at a young age. He did so by accident, but now it is a passion.

"A few years ago, I visited the Luxor and kept a $1 chip," said Young, a regional sales representative for a vitamin company. "I took it home, glued a magnet to the back of it and put it on my refrigerator. I kept doing that and, before long, I had 94 casino chip magnets on my refrigerator."

Young soon got serious about the hobby and began collecting chips with brass inlays. A popular form of chip at one time because of its durability, only one Nevada casino still uses those with brass inlays -- the Silversmith in Wendover.

Young said that the fantastic growth of chip collecting can be seen on the Internet. He noted that three years ago, the eBay website had about 80 casino chip sales going on. Today there are thousands of chip sale deals at that site. Campiglia said that he uses the Internet to deal his product and has up to 50 sales at a time going on at eBay.

"I spend way too much money on this hobby," Young said with a smile as he purchased three brass inlay chips from Campiglia's table at the show.

He wasn't the only one to spend a lot of money at the three-day event.

Convention Chairman Wayne Thompson of Lexington, Ky., said that hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of chips were expected to change hands at the 109 tables in the Tropicana's Grand Ballroom. It also was expected that the previous attendance record set last year for the show at 2,300 would be shattered.

"You got all kinds of collectors out there," Thompson said. "We have one club member who refuses to pay more than $7 for a chip yet has several thousand in his collection. One of our biggest collectors has just 50 chips, but they are the rarest and his collection is valued in the six figures."

Thompson credits the spread of gambling nationwide to the strong growth in his hobby. But casino chips were around in other states long before those areas got legalized gambling on Indian reservations and riverboats.

Gene Trimble, the keno and bingo manager at the Fiesta hotel-casino, began collecting chips at age 21 when a gambler walked up to him in 1963 and handed him a bunch of chips from nonlicensed gaming establishments that had been shut down.

"He said, 'hold on to these, they may be valuable some day,'" said Trimble, a resident of Las Vegas for the last 20 years. From that modest start, Trimble has become a top collector of what the industry calls "illegals." Unlicensed gambling houses, prior to 1960, dotted the South where Trimble was raised.

Trimble, who has 13,000 chips in his collection, also collects Nevada specimens, including limited editions and commemoratives.

"The neat thing is that if you collect just current chips -- and if after a few months you decide chip collecting isn't for you -- you can bring them back to the casinos and get all of your money back," Trimble said. "That doesn't happen with many other hobbies."

Trimble noted that if a current chip is taken out of circulation or the casino closes, the property must give a 120-day notice to allow people to redeem their chips for cash. Still, a collector would have the option not to turn in a chip and instead keep it and hope it becomes worth more than face value on the collectibles market.

Many of today's collectors and dealers say that casinos, which long ignored collectors, now are recognizing the chip collections phenomenon by creating limited edition and commemorative chips.

In many cases, it's a good source of revenue for the casinos because it costs just 75 cents to make a $5 chip, and if a chip is never put into circulation and is instead stowed away in a collection, that's $4.25 profit for the house.

However, some casino operators say they really are addressing a wider market with commemorative and limited edition chips, not just a niche collector's market.

"We simply want people to take a little piece of Harrah's Laughlin home with them to show others who may become future customers," said Jim Hunt, casino manager of the resort on the Colorado River.

"No question, the collectibles market is a good-sized market, but it is just a small percentage of the bigger, overall market we hope to attract."

What Harrah's Laughlin did not know when it created its "But it's a Dry Heat" chip last year was that it would win the award for "Chip of the Year" from the club that has more than 2,300 members.

"We were surprised when we got the letter informing us of the award, but we were happy because a lot of effort went into this chip," Hunt said. "Also, a number of casinos put out 30 or 40 commemorative chips a year, while we put out just four."

The winning chip has a $2.50 denomination, a hot pink border and a picture of a smiling skeleton hugging a jackpot-paying slot machine under the hot desert sun. Jim Smith, the director of casino operations for Harrah's Laughlin, was credited with the concept of the chip. Just 3,000 of them were printed.

"We decided to have fun with the chip," Hunt said. "They are pieces of artwork."

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