Large & Small Crown Chips

I fell in love with small crown chips made by the T.R. King Co. a couple of years ago when Doug Saito was holding an auction of the small crown collection of Hank Boss. As with most of Doug's auctions, he did an excellent catalog with lots of nice pictures. I liked the simple mold design, and something about it seemed older and more genuine than some of the more plentiful designs.

I started picking small crown chips up when I could, on eBay and at the annual CCGTCC convention. There are a lot of them around that can be had fairly inexpensively, since T.R. King continues to manufacture chips using the small crown mold, which they began using around 1950. Of course, many of the chips they manufacture are for home poker sets, as anybody can order from them, not just casinos.

T.R. King also manufactured a chip using what is referred to as the large crown mold from about 1938 to 1967. Although there are many of these chips around too, there don't seem to be as many as the small crowns. This means you'll expect to pay a little more for large crown chips. Many of the more desireable large crowns are older Nevada chips, including some from Las Vegas, and they can get quite expensive.

One great place to view some large crown chips is the home page of Richard Fellman, self-proclaimed "Large Crown Nut".