"How did you 'buy' your half-dollars? With bullion? or did you merely 'change' a $100 bill. Im not sure its a purchase if you just changed money."

You nailed it David! A currency exchange is not the same thing as buying chips or tokens because you can't take casino markers to any bank or other financial institution and exchange them for cash.

In all reality, they are only worth face value at the place issuing them. To me, that means that even if a casino will use the word "sell" when referring to chip or token availability, the "sale" is still only giving the buyer possession of a marker that can only be converted back into cash at that casino.

They are legal monetary devices only in house, ergo, the casino still owns them in that they are still liable for their value.

I'm not suggesting that they want to provide that value for every marker that walks out the door.

Bob