Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Silver Casino Strikes Are Collectible by Coin Collectors and Others

In the early 1990s casino strikes began to appear. These are coins, or more properly, tokens, that were intended to be collected. However, they were redeemable for their face value. Currently, there are no longer ready at most, if not all, casinos, due to the increase in the price of silver. The most base denomination, the ten dollar strike, oftentimes contained about six-tenths of a Troy ounce of fine silver.

These were commonly dinky edition strikes that had silver as the primary metal. Indeed, many also carry a mint mark, and have the casino's name and an connected image on the obverse, and an artistic image on the reverse.

Casio Ocean

The usual denominations comprise the seven dollar, the ten dollar, the twenty dollar, the twenty-eight dollar, the forty dollar, the one hundred dollar, and the two hundred dollar face values.

The ten dollar casino strikes commonly have a large brass rim. The twenty dollar denomination commonly has no brass rim, and contains supplementary fine silver. In fact, the greater the denomination, the more fine silver the casino assault contains. The twenty-eight dollar denomination ordinarily begins the sizes that contained a heavy gauge electroplating of twenty-four karat gold used to emphasize the image. Starting with the forty dollar issues, the rim was also heavy gauge electroplated gold. For completeness it should be noted that a few twenty-five dollar casino strikes were issued.

Occasionally, some large casinos would add colorization to the forty dollar strikes. These are especially collectible.

A similar token, the bingo token, exists in a twenty-five dollar denomination for any casinos. These have no rim.

Larger casino strikes, when redeemed, were sometimes cancelled. Some had a hole punched straight through them, others had small indentations where the metal was gouged out by the casino. Cancelled casino strikes are less provocative to collectors.

Several of the Grand Casinos issued brass plated with gold casino assault sets of four themed casino strikes, commonly as gifts to better customers. These were often five dollar strikes, but are not considered very desirable, even when still in the primary provocative display case. However, they are ordinarily quite provocative pieces.

Some mints used the same image on the reverse of casino strikes for many casinos.

During the height of casino assault collecting, cruise lines, the airport in Las Vegas, and many small casinos offered strikes. They would be visible, at least the smaller ones, in transparent attachments to slot machines, and drop down as winnings. Larger ones were too heavy to drop out of a machine.

While casinos cannot offer these today, they are still highly collected. In fact, those from casinos that have ceased operations seem to go at a high price compared to others.

Some citizen obtain by casino, but others obtain by theme. The themes vary greatly. Trains, automobiles, celebrities, and old west are but a few examples of themes oftentimes used.

Silver Casino Strikes Are Collectible by Coin Collectors and Others

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