Yes, the Arab chips are Crest and Seal chips. Some Crest and Seal chips may have been made better than others, just like generic clay chips and ivory chips vary in quality and, I guess, everything else in the world. The Arab chip pictured below (just a different color than the ones in my auction) is worth more than the two you show put together. The Arab chip has a shiny inlay and a sheen of sorts over the clay (it is well used). The inlay is not just bare paper; it is coated with whatever. I call a Crest and Seal (and months ago there were long posts about it here) what the chip distributors called them in their gambling supply catalogs and what most collectors call them today. If a clay chip with a flat mold and a litho inlay is good enough for them, it is good enough for me. (Some distributor even called hub mold chips with a litho inlay Crest and Seal chips, though I wouldn't.)

The best advice is to call things (1) what most collectors are calling them already, and (2) what will not be confusing to collectors; one shouldn't need to be a scientist or a chemist to describe chips. Therefore, I DEFINE A CREST AND SEAL CHIP as (a) a clay chip with (b) a flat/plain mold and (c) a litho inlay.

Rich Hanover likes the thin, round-edged, shiny-surfaced Crest and Seal chips like the CCDM one pictured in his post in this thread. I like them too. I own one of the CCDM chips in excellent condition, and with my eyes closed, I can still detect the inlay-clay merger when I move my fingernail over the surface! And I have many old, used, thin, round-edged Crest and Seal chips that no longer have a shiny surface (just the inlay is shiny). And I have many generic litho inlay poker chips (I call them Crest and Seal chips) that have shiny surfaces like the Crest and Seal chips Rich likes. One is the PTEM-Sailing Ship. So, I think it is dangerous to draw too fine a line in the definition of a Crest and Seal chip.

I am completely in agreement with Howdy Herz' "A Collector's Guide to Nevada Gaming Checks and Chips," where he says on page 26, "Crest & Seal Plain Mold Inlay -- The first type of clay check with a smooth border and recessed [litho, I'm sure he'd add] inlay......" The chip illustrating the crest and seal chip on page 26 is a square-edged Flamingo, LV, chip -- clay, plain mold (i.e., no embossed rim mold) and litho inlay.

In Dale Seymour's "Antique Gambling Chips" he reproduces, on p. 31, a Burt Company ad (I happen to own an original of this colorful advertising flyer) that describes its "Seal and Crest Checks" as having a laminated printed inlay, and then goes on to describe all the variations of the rest of the chip: "These checks can be supplied in square edge, dull linen finish or supplied in a round edge polished check."

Dale Seymour in his book talks about Crest and Seal chips and reproduces a Mason ad (pp.16-17), and nowhere is there mention of a shiny seal over the entire chip, nor does the Burt ad nor does Herz. (And as I said above, the shiny surface can be worn away with use.)

Robert