When Las Vegas casinos shut down, their chips become worthless in cash. However, their value as collectibles frequently rises. That’s the reason simple $25 chips from the Tropicana are currently priced at $50 on eBay. 

For one exceptionally rare chip, the gap between its financial and collectible worth is 15,000 times. 

Similar to baseball cards and comic books, numerous casino chip collectors worldwide come together for conventions and participate in clubs to indulge in their hobby. 

Here are their three sacred treasures. 

1. Golden Goose

$5 Chip, 1976-77

Price: $75,000

Herb Pastor opened The Golden Goose in 1975 at the location of the closed Mecca Slots casino on 20 Fremont St. 

It was a slots-only establishment, with the exception of one blackjack table. That table was in operation solely from March 1976 until August 1977. 

When the table disappeared, all its chips vanished too — apart from this one, which was traded by an unknown seller to an unknown buyer at the 2014 Casino Chip & Gaming Tokens Collectors Club (CCGTCC) convention. 

Considered unique, it established a record for the price of a casino chip that remains unbroken to this day. (In the mid-1990s, that identical chip was auctioned for $3,000.) 

The Golden Goose functioned for five years until Pastor merged it with the Glitter Gulch Casino to create a strip club named the Girls of Glitter Gulch. 

2. Lucky Casino

$5 Chip, 1963-67

Price: $52,500

That identical year, during the same convention (CCGTCC), this $5 chip closely followed the Golden Goose sale. It is among just two of its type recognized to have persisted. 

The Lucky Casino was established in 1963 at the location of the old Lucky Strike Casino (and earlier, the Frontier Club) at 117 Fremont St. It ran for just four years before being acquired and torn down by the Golden Nugget during a block-long expansion in 1968. 

3. Showboat Casino

$1 Chip, 1960-61

Sold for: $28,998.88

In 2008, Sandy Marbs from Maryland Heights, Mo., a widow relying on Social Security, found eBay as a means to generate some additional income. Among the trinkets she discovered in the home was this chip from the Showboat Casino, which ran from 1954 to 2000 on Boulder Highway. 

Marbs stored it in her jewelry box, as the boat depicted on it evoked memories of Missouri, for 47 years. It was merely the third recognized surviving $1 chip from the casino, which was called the Castaways from 2000 to 2004. (Demolished in 2006, the site was transformed in 2021 into apartments.) 

Marbs kicked off the auction at $2.25 and was quickly flooded with messages requesting to conclude the auction for a cash payment. The proposals varied between $1,000 and $5,000. 

Fortunately for Marbs, a message arrived from a CCGTCC member, who suggested she allow the auction to proceed naturally, and enhanced her chances by sharing superior images of it. 

It was purchased by a collector named Glen Grush and has not resurfaced in the market since. 

Chip Assertions That Might Not Add Up 

It is important to mention that the New York Times stated in 2008 that a Long Island attorney named Eric Rosenblum sold a 1980s $100 Desert Inn chip at the CCGTCC convention for $20,000. 

Casino.org could not confirm that report. Nor was a 2022 statement by casino chip collector Steven Cutler, to the Las Vegas Sun, asserting that he possesses a 1950s chip from the former California Club valued at $30,000.