We should call these cousins, not twins. Here's another pair of chips that are sometimes confused in collectors' minds. At least, the memory of a red $5 Desert Inn with coin insert used to be all I remembered. Then I found out about "black letters" and molds.

The chip on the left is an early Desert Inn. It was made using a BudJones process that left the recessed features of the coin center coated with black. The second chip uses what appears to be the same coin dies, but it never had the black paint coating the bottom of the letters and pictures. For those of us who have since learned about molds and inserts, there are other significant differences. The first chip uses a standard BudJones dice and cards mold with incuse images and has three solid white inserts. The second chip uses a custom house mold ordered by Desert Inn (with flush features) and has three sets of SPLIT white inserts.

These distinctinctions are important, of course, if you collect Desert Inn chips, but also because the first chip is worth 5-10 times as much due to its scarcity. If you see a $5 black-letter Desert Inn offered for $30, I suggest you snap it up.

Incidently, the pic of the later chip is from Paul Hegge's web site display of Nevada chips as I don't have a chip handy.