In Vegas, a casino won’t stop you from leaving with uncashed chips.
What’s to stop someone from taking chips from a casino, using those as a model to make others, then bringing the counterfeit chips back to the casino and cashing them?
I’m sure there’s a system in place to prevent this, but I’ve never heard of one and I’ve never heard of chip counterfeiting either.
What’s the straight dope on this?
You said they won’t stop you from leaving with your chips — The easiest way would be to prevent you from bringing any in. That’s how I would solve the problem were it my digs.
These people mention a few of the ways casinos try to avoid counterfeiting
http://www.gemcommunications.com/WGCE/Publications/Casino_Journal/CurrentIssue/feature7.htm
And these people say their chips are designed to prevent counterfeiting but don’t say how.
On a related note, I saw a show on TLC last week about casino security. Very interesting. At least one casino has a microchip with a unique identifier in each chip, and it also has equipment to read the serial # of each chip embeded in the table. So when you cash a $100 bill in for $5 chips, the casino computer knows which 20 chips you got. If you lay down $10 to bet on a BJ hand, the casino knows which 2 $5 chips you laid down. If you get up and leave the table for another, the casino knows what table you went to. Similarly, the casino computer can track your betting habits, and it can flag you if you are betting like you are counting cards.
Very interesting program.
One of the guys in my shop class was telling me about a friend of his who had a bunch of fake, high dollar casino chips. This guy wouldn’t use them in the casino, he’d use them to pay off his, um, “date”( 
) for the evening, if you get my drift. So far, he hasn’t been caught…