Q:
One evening last fall I was strolling through the Wynn looking for a realitively "cheap" craps game and came across a private table with four players. Curious, I looked to see the limit they were playing and noticed one Hollywood-looking type playing with brownish-colored $25,000 chips -- and he had several racks of them!! I've been curious ever since as to what is the highest limit casino chip actually used as legal tender on a casino floor.

A:

The highest-limit chip we've ever heard of/seen dates back to when the Aladdin first reopened back in 2000, with the high-limit London Clubs-franchised casino upstairs. They had a $10 million chip -- actually a large rectangular plaque -- which was just a gimmick, plus some other super-high-limit checks for $1 million, $500,000 etc. To see photographs of these, visit this link to thechipboard.com, which is a great online resource and community for anyone interested in rare and collectible chips.
But those no longer exist and we very much doubt they ever made it out of the vault other than for publicity shoots.

In general, the highest-limit chips you'll ever see in action on a casino floor are those $25K ones you clocked at the Wynn. They're commonly brown-colored at other casinos, too. When we called around to confirm this, we learned that other high-end casinos sometimes have chips with a face value of $100,000 (the Venetian and Paris among them), but these are seldom seen on the floor, since they'd exceed the table limit at most establishments and are simply kept in the vault for paying out large wins. We recall seeing a $5,000 chip on the carpet under a crap table where a "private" game like the one you saw was taking place; it was eventually spotted and returned to its owner, but can you imagine dropping and losing a $100,000 chip?