Significance

• Customized poker chips are a relatively recent development. Prior to the 1940s, casinos and gambling houses had a set number of designs, though numbering in the hundreds, from which to choose for their gambling tokens. Typically, they were available in red, white, blue and yellow, not the boundless colors of today. The limited number of designs, of course, had one inherent problem. If two houses had the same design, though a rarity, the markers could be carried from one house to the next with no actual money exchanging hands. The need was quite apparent for a customized poker chip.
  
  

Features

• Today, every casino, be it in Las Vegas or even in Wisconsin, will have its own customized poker chips, even when a given casino is actually a division of another. Usually, these customized poker chips are made of clay composite on which an inlay of a unique design specific to the house is placed and then adhered through a molding process. This molding process makes the inlay part of the actual chip. Removing the inlay would for all intents and purposes destroy the chip. Besides the actual inlay, the edge of the chips, otherwise known as its "edge spots," will carry a color combination that is exclusive to that casino, further differentiating one house's chips from the next.
  
  

Function

• More recently, UV markings, radio-frequency identification trackers and other security measures have been incorporated into the customizable design of the poker chips. These enhanced features make it possible for casinos to actually keep track of what is on the floor. Due to the high amount of dollars in play on a given night, the technology surrounding the chips continues to increase, even instituting the requirement for each casino to have an alternative set of chips on hand. These alternative chips also have a distinct design that is specific to the casino, yet different from those currently in play.
  
  

Effects

• All of these customizable design elements to a poker chip have made it virtually impossible to reproduce a given casino's chips, and have strengthened the security of any transaction in the house. Since any poker chip in use obviously represents a specific dollar amount, the amount of money in the bank, so to speak, should match the value of the chips currently in play on the floor. Prior to the use of customized poker chips, this wasn't necessarily the case.
  
  

Considerations

• Today, many manufacturers have opened up the production of customized poker chips to the public, making it completely possible for individuals to fashion their own unique gambling tokens. Of course, the security elements implemented for casinos isn't something available (or needed) for general use, but most other options are entirely accessible. With these types of poker chips, you can choose from a number of customizable design aspects or even submit your own logo to be stamped, for lack of a better word, onto your chips.