Today, we see Chipco chips by the thousands, but in 1991, a Chipco chip was exotic looking. The first Chipco order was made for the San Juan Hotel-Casino in Puerto Rico, but most of us hadn't seen that chip at first.

The earliest Chipcos that I remember were issued for the President (riverboat) casino in Davenport, Iowa, as one of the very first of the midwest boom in chips. At about the same time, Harrah's Tahoe issued the "sailboat" chip along with the Lakeside-Tahoe $5 Chipco chip. Of these early Chipcos, the "sailboat" chip was the best known, having been issued by a casino well-known to us chippers. At first, the maker (Chipco) wasn't even commonly known. Our methods of describing chips (mold type, insert shapes & colors, inlay shape & description, etc.) just didn't fit.

In comparison to the plainer-looking traditional H&C and other mold chips, these Chipcos really stood out. It's no accident that Chipco swept the first 4 years of COTY. Paulson & others had no choice but to respond with oversize-round inlays, and then full-graphic (giant-graphic) inlays that are familiar now. Chipcos are just another type of mold to collectors these days, but back in '91, when the "sailboat" chip first came out, it was really a noticeable departure from how chips looked at the time.