I’ve seen several posts and have received many e-mails asking questions regarding the upcoming eleventh edition of The Chip Rack, so I’m going to post the answers to all of them.

THE NEW AUTHORS

I had many meetings with Alan, Michael, and Ernie over the past several years, with various partners, attempting to purchase TCR since it had not been published for several years. I felt that this book is the most widely-used guide to Nevada casino chips and has tremendous importance within the chip-collecting community. At last year’s convention Len Cipkins and I, along with Greg Susong, were finally able to make a deal with them to purchase the rights to the book. Unfortunately, Greg’s health issues made it impossible for him to contribute to the enterprise and he felt it best to bow out. Though we miss Greg’s involvement, we were very lucky to be able to add David Spragg into the partnership. As everyone knows, David is one of the most knowledgeable people in the hobby and he has been a tremendous asset.

WHAT WE DO

In the past 8 months Len, David, and I have been working non-stop to produce the new edition of TCR. Len is responsible for getting the book printed, marketed, and distributed and also functions as our business manager. David worked on adding in the thousands of chips produced since the 10th edition, which was printed in June of 2004. I spent my time adjusting the values of the existing 20,000+ chips and also condensing the roulettes (more on that later).

TIMING AND AVAILABILITY

The new edition of The Chip Rack has indeed gone to the printers and should be available for shipment sometime around mid-May. We selected this time period in order that collectors and dealers would have the option of receiving the new edition far enough in advance of the CC&GTCC national convention so that they may either mark up the book with their collections or use it in pricing their inventories. For those who do not need the book in advance of the convention, you will be able to purchase it at our table at the South Point.

Very early on we made the decision that we (SCS Publishing) would be the sole distributor of TCR 11 until after the convention, at which point we will make it available to dealers and stores. If you would like to order the book in advance of its publication you may do so at http://www.thechiprack.com/order.htm. Online payment options include credit cards and PayPal. We will also, of course, accept personal checks.

APPEARANCE OF THE BOOK

The physical appearance of the 11th edition of The Chip Rack will be nearly the same as that of past editions. For continuity’s sake we have used the identical cover photograph and slightly adjusted cover banners to reflect the new publishers. As always the book will be plastic spiral-bound and will easily lay flat.

A major decision we made was to produce the 11th edition in a single volume, and we have included just about all of the information that was available in previous editions. There are now over 27,000 chips that are fully described within the book.

Another change is that we’ve used a slightly smaller font for the body of the book. It will still be very readable and this was done to accommodate a couple of other changes regarding the TCR numbers and descriptions of roulette tables that I will mention below.

WHAT IS DIFFERENT IN TCR 11

There are two “major” differences between the 11th edition and past editions. The first of these is that we have expanded the TCR Numbers to add descriptive after a decimal point, used when describing similar chips. For illustration:

Big Al’s Speakeasy $1 with long-cane version of the hat & cane chip: previously N2822 is now N2822.L
Big Al’s Speakeasy $1 with short-cane version of the hat & cane mold: previously E3122 is now N2822.S

Desert Inn $5 with spun-coin inlay: previously N4518 is now N4518.P
Desert Inn $5 with smooth-coin inlay: previously N8136 is now N4518.S

If you use a database for your collection and wish to update your collection table to the current numbers, I will be happy to provide you with a reference table with the old and new TCR numbers.

The other “major” difference is that, wherever our knowledge of the chips made it possible, we have collapsed roulette tables into a single line and removed the records of the individual chips from the book. This task (which took countless hours) was what ultimately allowed us to issue the book as a single volume. Here we used color codes to identify the individual chips, both in the TCR numbers (which do not appear in the the 11th edition), and in the inlay description for the table records. This is what the old and new records will look like (condensed version):

Rio, Las Vegas – 24-Line mold – Table 3

Old records:

TCR Number Color Inlay Description
E3631 DARK BLUE “ROULETTE 3”
E3632 GRAY “ROULETTE 3”
E3633 LIGHT BLUE “ROULETTE 3”
E3634 PURPLE “ROULETTE 3”
E3635 SALMON “ROULETTE 3”
E3636 YELLOW “ROULETTE 3”

New record:

TCR Number Color Inlay Description
E3631 6 COLORS ROULETTE 3 [dbl-gy-lbl-pu-sl-ye]

As a side note, individual records for ALL roulette chips still exist in the TCR database and may be used for future applications.

You will notice in the above example another change we made this year. Where in previous editions the inlay descriptions were in uppercase and text appearing on the chip was enclosed in quotation marks, in the 11th edition the inlay descriptions are now in mixed case, with text appearing on the chip in uppercase.

Another change involves the moving of most “non-casino” chips to a separate section toward the back of the book. This is where you will find chips for gaming schools, bars, golf courses, etc. Chips issued by or for casinos remain in the main section.

We have also eliminated some chips from The Chip Rack. The exclusions include most fantasy chips (though the Borland and Osborne chips remain), manufacturers sample chips, chips made for home games, etc.

THE FUTURE OF THE CHIP RACK

We intend to publish The Chip Rack on an annual basis. We feel that this reference is too important to the hobby to publish only sporadically. On our website, http://www.thechiprack.com, we will maintain The Visual Chip Rack and will be adding thousands of new scans. It will remain a free reference for everyone to use.

It is our intention, in the future, to do an on-line version of The Chip Rack on a subscription basis, complete with collection management, up-to-the-minute values, and ad hoc reporting (ie: printing custom versions of TCR). This will likely be at least a year off, and you will hear more about this when (and if) we get close to publishing it.

If you have any questions at all regarding The Chip Rack, please don’t hesitate to contact one of your friendly authors.