I tend to see both sides of the coin....
Customer's side....hey... people leave those small cents for the next person. It kind of like a curtesy.
I have seen plenty of machines with less than 25 cents on them. I don't generally go and cash out the tickets, but I have put my money and casino card in a few of them and commingled the money on occasion. I also found a $100 casino chip on a cruise line on the casino floor. I sat there looking at it for a few minutes waiting for someone to "be frantically looking for a lost chip". I decided to pick it up and wait for a few more minutes. Nothing! I was going to head over to the cage and turn it in....my father in law told me I was a fool if I turned it in. So....I gambled with it and lost the money in less than 20 minutes.
Casino's side...... I can see their side. I don't think they can really put a limit on the money taken theory. Where would the line be drawn... 20 cents? More than $1? You have to think that people just walk around through casino's looking for an easy ride. They could loiter and make $10-100 a day cashing in tickets with putting out a penny. What if someone walks away from a machine without thinking to take their ticket for $50?
I would think that the casino might be leaning toward protecting those patrons....even though it's pennies most of the time.
****Also....a few thousand dollars in pennies left behind (for some majorly big casino's) daily could help out their operation cost. I know that would be minimal...but could be 500,000 + in a year. I do realize that none of the Colorado casinos are huge....but they have plenty of competition.
I remember going to Colorado when I was in my early to mid 20's....we took a bus trip from Aurora to Vail to snowboard. When we returned our bus made a few stops at some of the casino's.
I vaguely remember that you could NOT bet more than $5 on any blackjack bet. I'm not sure if it was just the casino I was at...or all the casino's. I just remembered it was dumb!!!
But maybe they have to have wacky laws to operate.