Surely, there wasn't action going on in a back room with all the furniture they had and, even with the showroom demonstrations, that surely wasn't enough to produce all this wearing away... Right?

Yep. The stuff was already worn when the factory received it from the casinos; one of the programs CARO offered casinos was the buy back of material to be recycled which, has been found on site in several stages of being reground and shaped in order to receive a new face... Thus the reason we see those thin chips and plaques which lost their beveled edge in the process and substituted with a pencil edge or, worse; a square edge open to all sorts of edge nicks which can and does lead to further fractures.

[By the way; legend tells us Napoleon III impost a bunch of casino rules of which one was worn or damaged nacre had to be removed from the tables... The other rules about how far some games had to be from Paris is pretty much defined, accurately...]

What material was shipped to The Americas entailed a totally different process of removing the central field engraving by grinding it down, or what we notice on the pieces originating from Spain and sent to Cuba and Puerto Rico, with a totally different style engraving or blank but, still with that thin, undesirable square edge as on the oval Union Club plaques which I had honor of seeing in Coconut Grove when they made their debut in the USA... Still ultra-rare, though.

Anyway; this is my last worn piece from the CARO COLLECTION; $24, delivered...