Good technical information, Robert. Thanks for
taking the time...and lucky for you it wasn't my
Crest and Seals you dissected.

The first time I ever heard of a Crest and Seal was
about 11-years ago when I opened my first chip book:
"Harvey's Guide to Collecting Gaming Checkss and
Chips" by Howard Herz.

On page-13; atop the page, was the heading "Crest &
Seal Clay Composition Checks (C&S)" and directly
below was stated: A plain clay check with an inlay
was offered by various distributors as a crest &
seal check. These do not have a mold design but are
a composition stock." He then illustrates the chip
seen below and along side an S.S. Tango "100" chip.
This, to me, was my first impression of a Crest &
Seal chip. Any chip resembling either one of those
IS a Crest & Seal; nothing more, nothing less.

We must also memember that there has been well over
50-years of Crest & Seal type production in the
United States. Manufacturers' catalogues show us
this; the museum at US Playing Card Company in
Cincinnati shows us hundreds of "special order"
chips made between 1911 and 1939. I've had dated
C&S chips (on the inlay) on display at Biloxi with
1946 on them. I've interviewed former employees of
USPC who actually disassembled the Poker Chip
Division in 1948-49. Also heard beautiful stories
from some how Quality Control would dump all the
imperfect chips into 55-gal. barrels to later be
taken to the dump.

So, to cut this short (I need to go to a stamp show
looking for chips), we can expect to see many types
of different construction methods that produced
Crest and Seal chips...and the main distinctive
characteristic to remember is that "a C&S is a litho
inlay embedded into a plain clay composition chip."

If you want to become an addicted Crest and Seal
freak like Hanover, Eisenstadt or I, then you're
simply asking for trouble...but I think Hanover can
be saved before he, too, starts ripping his chips
apart. <g>

I've seen and taken apart every type we've read
about in our books; including the very thick
Celluloid-type disk with the graphics printed on the
reverse.

BTW, the chip seen below is available at full book.

You didn't think you were going to get away without
a sales pitch, did you ¿¿¿

JB