Opened a new post as the other was too old!
Notes:
These chips I purchased "in Cuba" around year 2000. This is at a time where there were few "fakes" because there were so many real chips that fakes were really not warranted.
These not so pretty chips, very simplistic, carried very little price, as the only people who purchased them were the few "die hard collectors", the rest wanted the more elegant 50's chips. Interestingly, these chips were very valuable to us, they were real and they represented the true chips used by Cubans in the not so fancy casinos of Havana. Prior to the 40's these types were what people used throughout Cuba.
My chips have been in my collection and vault for 16 years, thus the mentioning of a marker being used on "Erardo"s chip is wrong. If you see mine, and if you see everybody else's who have these chips, their colors match, front & back. So I suspect that some cheap ink was used at the time of manufacture.
These chips were found in Santiago, where chips used were cheaper as the city was very rich but the common people were very poor, compared to Havana. In addition that area was where the Mestizos & black casinos were. Mostly with "pennies" denomination. You can see the denominations here are mostly cents, with few dollar denominations (the ones with the two dots, very much used in the "Oriente" part of Cuba).
Enjoy looking at the chips the common people of Santiago used in their small casinos!
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