You might be able to make a case for owning one if you only kept it and never "circulated" it by selling or trading. I'd still be concerned that the Feds could confiscate them if they decided to. In the national papers each week there are thousands of listings of private property taken by the government, many times just to finance the law enforcement agencies. In theory, many citizens could recover their property if they followed procedure and filed suit, but most do not.

I think the situation of casino chips is different. Only gaming regulations are involved, not state or federal laws. In theory, a casino could accuse you of theft if you took their roulette chips, but it's not likely to happen. This has been discussed in the Club over the years, but it's pretty widespread. My take would be if you are a club member and are asked by authorities to testify whether you saw someone steal roulette chips, Club ethics would require you to answer questions regarding the purported theft (a state defined crime). What's not clear is whether taking the roulette chip yourself without casino management permission violates Club ethics. "Harvesting" for the purpose of "preserving gaming history" might be a defense .

In the case of copyright violations, I believe only the one doing the "copying" without permission can be prosecuted, not those looking at or possesing the copies. In the case of chips made using copyrighted images, I believe the casinos were required to no longer use or sell the chips in question. Circus Circus in Reno had chips made with Red Skelton clown images on them. They had permission from the estate to use them for only a specific period of time. When that expired, they destroyed the chips they had. There was no attempt to "claw back" the chips from collectors who had some