Over the years, as poker developed, clay poker chips developed right alongside it. They first appeared in the late 1870s or 1880s, as a response to the need for a more consistent way of keeping track of players’ winnings, other than the random coins, gold flakes or other valuable items that had been used before. Eventually, the practice of using such odds and ends was replaced by the creation of custom poker chips made of clay. The appearance of these chips began a history of development and refinement that has continued to this day.
Some of the early chips were made of bone, wood or even ivory, but clay chips soon began to dominate the game. They were created with metal molds in which the clay was placed and put under high pressure, to take on the desired shape. However, users discovered early on that chips made entirely of clay tended to be brittle and could break easily. So eventually the manufacturers added ceramic materials to the clay, to make the mixture stronger and more durable. Since that time, all poker chip sets have really been made of this clay-ceramic composite.
Once the type of chip was standardized, casinos further developed clay poker chips to prevent forms of cheating. In the beginning, they did this partly using the shapes of the molds, and partly by means of the clay-ceramic formula used. Each casino developed a proprietary clay formula, so their chips could not be used (and cashed) at another casino. Molds were created for the same purpose, adding specialized indentations, engravings, spots and so on into the very shape of the chip itself, to make it easily distinguishable from others. Casino poker chips became completely individualized.
In recent years, the development of poker chips has taken another leap that threatens to leave older clay poker chips behind. New technologies have now created chips that can be tracked more accurately than the former method of just using a casino’s characteristic designs on their own chips. Now you find some of the newer casino poker chips implanted with tracking devices like radio frequency ID tags, for example. Even the materials have started changing, the mixture of clay and ceramics replaced by metal with a hard resin overlay. With the introduction of these new technologies and materials, it’s possible that the long, fascinating history of the clay chip is coming to an end.
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