To clean or not to clean the casino chips in your collection...

There are two schools of thought.  The first is that you should never clean your chips.  The dirt and grime on a specific chip gives it character and shows the time and use it experienced on a live gaming table before being liberated from the casino into your collection.  The second school of thought is that the chip looks much better clean.  It's generally agreed within the chip collecting hobby that it's a personal preference but regardless, cleaning a chip does NOT reduce it's value.

If you have a high end chip that you plan on reselling down the road it is probably better not to clean it and to allow the eventual buyer to make his own decision whether to clean or not to clean it.

An important word of caution here... if you decide to clean your chips you do NOT want to use a water based cleaner on your composite chips.  Ceramic chips can be cleaned with soap and water, heck Chipco International advertises that their chips can be put into a dishwasher.  However water can fade composite chips and even warp them so be very careful with the cleaner you choose.

Personally, I prefer clean chips in my own collection.  I also clean the majority of the lower to mid value range chips before we sell them as I think they look better and are more desirable when they are clean.  In the past 13 years I have personally cleaned well over one hundred thousand chips.  I've pretty much got it down to a science at this point.  Using the following items I can conquer even the grimiest chip.



A pair of white cotton socks, a toothbrush, a dentist pick and some Sterling's Magic All Purpose Cleaner (a NON-WATER based product) is all I need to clean any chip.

I start by placing the two socks over my hands and scoop out a small dime sized dollop of Sterling's Magic.  I then rub it into both sides of the chip.



I then use the top part of the socks to wipe the pink "goop" off of the chip.  In most cases this is all you need to do, your chip will be clean.



Now for hot stamped chips you need to be very careful as the cleaning product and friction will completely remove the gold foil hot stamp.  I still use the socks but I place my thumb over the center of the chip protecting the hot stamped area.  I use a toothbrush to clean the mold/rim area of the chip with the Sterling's Magic.  Again you must be very careful with the hot stamp area of the chip because friction will ruin the hot stamp.



Within the hats and canes of PaulSon chips and the indented areas of others, you will sometimes get black "grime" that you cannot remove with the socks or the toothbrush.  This is where I pull out the dentist pick.  If you are not careful you can easily scratch your chip with this sharp tool.  However, with a little practice you can remove the grime from even the toughest spot with the pick.



So what's the result you ask?  Well these two $1 Rio chips looked identical before I cleaned the one on the right.  I was able to do this just with the Magic Cleaner and socks.  I did not need to use the toothbrush or the dentist pick to achieve this result.  It took me about 30 seconds to clean it.



If you'd like to try Sterling's Magic visit our eBay Store and try a pint.  Each container will clean up to 500 chips.  As an added bonus there are tons of other uses for Sterling's Magic.  It will clean just about anything.

Take a look at some of our other guides to learn more about the exciting hobby of casino chip collecting.

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We've been collecting chips since 1986, selling them since 1995, on eBay since 1998 and working with Chipco International to make custom chips since '98 as well.  If you have any questions about casino
chips, custom chips or eBay feel free to contact me through our About Me page.