Obsolete currency collectors are familiar with that kind of fake. Giardina, who spent about 15 hours a week at the casino’s poker table before being banned for life, says he didn’t make the fakes or even know the chips were fake. The Associated Press reported, “Investigators said they found his DNA on the underside of an adhesive sticker used to alter $1 poker chips to make them look like $500 chips.” Giardina, known to poker dealers at the Horseshoe casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa, as “Navy Tim,” was caught using three phony chips in June 2013. He was issued a written reprimand and ordered to forfeit $4,000 in pay.

In May 2014, Giardina was convicted of two counts of conduct unbecoming an officer for passing fake gambling chips and lying to an investigator about it. Strategic Command (formerly know as SAC) in the early stages of an NCIS probe into what was recently revealed as counterfeit chips. Giardina was fired as deputy head of the U.S. Venetian chips are popular take-home souvenirs, though it’s unlikely they’ll ever reach the value of Rat Pack-era Sands chips.ĭozens of Venetian chips are listed on eBay at any one time, with most attracting no bids.Ĭounterfeit chips, too, can be a problem.ĭuring the summer of 2013, Rear Adm. The casino, which was once owned by reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, was razed in 1996 to make way for the Venetian. The piece fetched the highest price of some 60 chips at Heritage’s first sale of casino chips.Īntique Trader magazine noted in a preview of the sale, “This ‘hourglass’ chip features one of the best-known vintage Vegas logos it was used in advertising and promotion throughout the 1950s and was a very appropriate emblem back when Vegas was a Western-themed town.”

In 2010, a Very Slightly Used (chip collectors have their own grading system) chip sold for $26,290 at auction. Heritage Auctions reports that casinos often made key chains for tourists out of withdrawn chips. In the center of both sides was a white disk showing the Casino’s trademark cowgirl leaning on an hourglass, four stars, two diamonds, the words THE SANDS / LAS VEGAS NEVADA and the denomination.Ĭollectors know of three undamaged pieces and one that was holed, apparently by the casino.

It was blue with three mustard-colored inserts at the edges. One of the rarer Sands chips is a $5 ninth-issue piece that was used in the late 1950s. The most expensive chip, a $100 Sands token, fetched $145,000 several years ago. Sands chips, because of their history, coolness and rarity, top the price guides.

Casino chip collecting is one of the hottest spots in exonumia, with prize disks fetching outsize prices.

Horseshoe casino silver poker chip