... what is "The most valuable and important part of anything."

It is quite apparent that the U.S. Mint does not consider the name of the country one of the most important parts of our coinage. I don't have any coin books handy, but I can't recall offhand ANY coinage that has had United States on the obverse.

I didn't include the name "Las Vegas" in my list of items I considered indicative of which side of the chip was the obverse because I don't think it's one of the "chief" pieces of information.

It seems to me that it is a toss up between the name of the casino and the denomination as to which is the single most important piece of information on the chip. The event being commemorated seems reasonably important (I think most commemorative coins and/or tokens have as their predominant obverse art some depiction of the event being commemorated).

On the other hand, it is only recently that Nevada required the name of the city to even appear on the chip. I'm not sure what the rules are in other jurisdictions, but there are still many California chips being produced without the name of the city in which the cardroom is located.

In short, I think Webster's definition accommodates the practice of the U.S. Mint in putting "U.S." on the reverse. ----- jim o\-S