Who made these Harvey's house mold roulettes and why are they so thin? (1 Viewer)

[upNdown]

I found these on eBay. Chipguide says these are from the 80s - could be true. There are some different Harvey’s roulettes (with symbols on them instead of letters) which Chipguide says are from the 70s. We may never know.
Anyway, the weird thing about them is they fit 21 to a barrel in a Paulson rack. And look at the pictures - yeah, they’re beat to hell, but they don’t look that worn.
FWIW, they’re 9.9 grams each.

 

[kmccormick100]

Definitely Paulsons, and pretty darn worn, looks like they had heavy texture a la LCVs and it’s almost gone

 

[upNdown]

and pretty darn worn

I guess I’m just reading them differently. I thought chips had to be like bike tires to fit 21 to a barrel, but maybe im wrong.

 

[mipevi]

Clay chips can and have come thinner than usual right from the factory, compression molding is more art than science sometimes.

 

[AWenger]

I thought chips had to be like bike tires to fit 21 to a barrel, but maybe im wrong.

I've got some THC roulette solids that are worn really thin to 21 or 22 in a 66.7mm barrel but the wear is along the face of the chip, and the chips still have somewhat defined/flat edges (although I wouldn't say they're sharp), and may even stand on edge with careful balancing.

How the chips wear down may have to do with how the chips are handled over the years at their specific casino games:
- On a roulette table, chips are often slid flat across the felt when placing bets, and/or by the dealer when collecting the losing bets. This would tend to wear down the face of the chip, but less so on rounding the edges.
- in a poker room, players shuffle the chips, which wears down the edges, so the chips from a poker room have much more rounded edges when they become bike tires. (California Bell $5 chips)
- I'm thinking that blackjack and other table games may wear down clay chips in a way somewhere in between roulette and poker. (such as Empress Casino (Joliet IL) used chips, because I think they didn't have a poker room.)

Clay chips can and have come thinner than usual right from the factory, compression molding is more art than science sometimes.

But the chips above still have some hatch texture on the outside ring of the face of the chip, so maybe these chips did come thinner from the factory. Maybe the Harvey's house mold is a little thinner than other molds.

 

[ekricket]

When I scroll from the top the cursive letters look raised above the chip. When I scroll into it from the bottom they are indented into the chip.

 

[upNdown]

You have any knowledge or input @BGinGA ? You often know things.

 

[BGinGA]

I agree with @AWenger and @kmccormick100 -- the wear pattern on roulette chips is typically different than that of chips used for poker and/or other table games (less edge rounding), and the crosshatching on the pictured roulette chips appears to be pretty worn down.

It won't take much material removal across 20 chips to account for an extra chip that's thinner than 3.3mm:

20 × 3.3= 66.6mm
66.6 ÷ 21 = 3.17mm
3.3 - 3.17 = 0.12857mm

That's less than 0.065mm per side of removed material per chip.