As I understand it, the effect in the Caesars Tahoe chips is called a "moire" effect, and it occurs when a lens (or in this case, a transparent plastic? sheet) is placed over an object (the printed image with the picture of Lake Tahoe). When you hold the image steady, then rotate the lens (or transparent covering on the chip) you get varying strengths of moire effect, from none (in an aligned position) to maximum (at 90 degrees) and back to none (at 180 degrees).

Now, for the 2 surfaces in the Silver Legacy chip, these look like (or rather "FEEL" like <g>) two different chip orders with different surfaces. A good way to check the 2 chips is to look at them with a magnifying glass or linen tester, where you can see the surface pattern. Various chip manufacturers have used a number of surfaces on chips in an effort to accomplish a specific purpose: accurate stacking and cutting. A casino wants a chip that can stack (at least 20-25 chips high) and stay straight and not slip around. At the same time, the stack of chips needs to be able to be cut easily, as in dividing a 20-chip stack into two 10-chip stacks. That's one reason why some casinos use $1 chips on their craps tables, even when they use $1 tokens on the 21 tables. The silver will not stack and cut as accurately as chips when in action on the craps tables.

If I haven't bored you yet, there's an actual physics property that accomplishes this feat of quick stacking and cutting. The small air space between chips, when stacked, forms a micro-vacuum that "locks" the chips in place, but is easily unlocked when a dealer breaks the vacuum when cutting the stack between any two chips. (Plus the weight of regulation casino chips helps keep the chips stacked in place, as compared to light-weight drug store/home game chips.)

Looking at various manufactured chips, they have various engineered features, such as a slight convex and/or recessed center inlay (or center portion on HS chips); or small cross-hatching surfaces; or on the new Bud Jones chips, such as the new Atlantis-Reno $1, a series of grooves that radiate outward to the edge. All these engineered features are for the purpose of improving stacking and cutting performance.

(OK, I'll confess I didn't just observe this stuff. I read about it in product literature or advertisements from various chip manufacturers over the years.)