Tonight I stopped by the Tuscany Casino to see if they are re-using their original gaming chips for their re-opened table games. Having never publishes a redemption notice when the Tuscany closed their table games and went slots-only, there was a good chance that they retained the original chips and just started using those chips when the table games re-opened.

When I walked in, I went to the small pit and could see that there were plenty of what looked like the original $1 chips. As for the $5's and even $25's, they were using the new release F-1 chips, but the original looking $5's and $25's were on the tables, but they were in the back of the rows, so the F-1 chips were used first.

They only had 2 tables open, a roulette and a blackjack table, and they were full, so I went to the cage to get some "souvenir" $1 chips. The nice lady at the cage did give me a stack of $1 chips, so I tipped her and left. But once I got home, I could see right away that the $1's were in 2 different versions. Some were creme in color and some were white. The creme chips had slightly smaller side dashes, and the dashes on the chip faces, of the smaller side dashes, were also smaller. Another difference was the relationship of the inlays to the 3-split inserts. All of the white versions had the "BJ" initials of Bud Jones at just slightly aligned between the dash and split insert at about the 9 o'clock position on the chips. The creme color chips aligned either between 2 dashes, or between a split insert pair.

And lastly, when under a UV light source, both versions appear different. The creme version is on the top row and the white version is on the bottom row. I do believe that the Tuscany did a re-order of at least $1 chips in order to re-open table games, and, that re-order has produced a 3rd variation from the 2 earlier variations that were not recognized until know.

So, a New Release?