casinos often return their plaques to Abbiati for cancellation/destruction.
Abbiati told me that they get to keep a proportion of these as their 'fee' for doing the destruction. They then use them as samples.
A large proportion of Abbiati's sample plaques are therefore cancelled genuine plaques.
Yes I accept this "supposedly" is from Kenya.
No Im not aware of any Playboy 'entity' that ever operated in Kenya.
But, if you read bio's on Heffner, you will find he lived in Kenya for part of the 1970's so its not impossible

I agree there are sample plaques made by Abbiati purely as samples, with fictitious names (many are shown in their catalog) but I dont believe they would have ever got permission to use the bunny logo just for samples, and I dont believe they would have done it without permission.