Debby Meister: Chip Designer Extraordinaire

Over the past year or so, a trend has swept through the circle of collectors that frequent Greg Susong's Chip Board.

More and more chip collectors are having personal chips made, which feature their name, CCGTCC number and often the brightly colored graphics that are available on chips produced by Chipco. A display of personal chips at the 2005 CCGTCC Convention included over 65 chips, many of them manufactured by Chipco.

Prior to this wave of personal chip production, there were only a few chip collectors with their own chips, and only a few of those were made by Chipco. One person changed that, and made it possible for dozens of collectors to have chips featuring graphics that reflect their individual personalities. Debby Meister has graciously offered her services over and over again to assist chippers in having their personal chips designed and produced. And, she has done this for free.

The past year has seen a steady parade of posts on The Chip Board from chippers proudly displaying their new chip designs and thanking Debby Meister for her help. Debby had designed so many chips that Andy Hughes has a page of Debby's designs on his Nevada Casino Chips website.

I decided to contact Debby for a cyber-interview about her chip-designing activities:

Do you do any other artwork besides designing chips?

I help people out with some web graphics now and then. Mostly it's chips, except what I do for my "real job".

Do you use art in your daily occupation?

Yes. I work in PC support for a large company and I put out a tips newsletter, more or less monthly, for the company intranet. To keep it from being too dry I throw in an illustration here and there. Sometimes, based on the time I have available, I have to use clipart, but I do original work as much as possible. I occasionally animate the graphics too. I've been told that when a new issue is announced, most of the people check it out just to see the graphics. At least our Help Desk uses the article content.

About when did you start designing chips?

In 2003.

Approximately how many chip designs have you done, including designs that haven't been made yet?

Approximately 85 and 100.

Of those, about how many were for personal chips?

Probably 90 percent including business card chips.

What casinos have you designed for?

The Palms... Thank you Gene Trimble




How many of your designs have been used by casinos?

Only three have been issued so far but there are some silver strikes on the way.

Which of your designs are you most proud of?

That's like asking a parent which child do you love more. I guess all of the Halloween (my favorite holiday) designs plus one or two others are at the top of the list.




Are you working on any special design projects that you can make public?

I have six Palms silver strikes coming out for Halloween. Plus, the Casino Chip and Gaming Token Collectors Club is planning to put out a home poker set. I believe the club magazine, "Casino Chip and Token News" is going to put an article about personal chips in one of the future issues.

To see more of Debby Meister's chip designs visit NevadaCasinoChips.com