For the casinos, the advantages are even greater. They no longer have to employ all the people who spent much of their time filling and emptying coin hoppers and spent the rest of their time keeping records on where the coins went. The lines at cashier cages move faster because buckets of coins don’t have to be counted, and there aren’t any jammed coin counters holding everybody up. Oh yes, the casinos do love the tickets.

The newest generation of cash ticket can be inserted into another slot machine as though it was real currency. These tickets have a printed bar code (see illustration) that the machine can read to register the appropriate number of credits. Although the tickets look as if they are easily reproducible with a copy machine, don’t try it. Each one contains a unique numeric security code. Any attempt to use or cash a second ticket with the same code will set off alarms.

This completely coinless system is prevalent in tribal casinos and by all means in online casinos, and numerous other casinos are installing it as well. When The Palms in Las Vegas opened its doors in 2001, all of its slot machines had cash ticket capability. Clearly, the use of cash tickets is rapidly spreading.

In many Midwestern riverboat venues, such as in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Missouri, the slot machines only accept casino tokens, not U.S. coins. This began in Iowa where the first gambling statute included a $200 per player loss limit. To enforce the law, a system was set up whereby each patron could purchase up to $200 in vouchers when entering a casino. The vouchers were then used to purchase gaming chips or slot machine tokens. The slot machines accepted only the casino tokens; if they accepted U.S. coins, gamblers could easily get around the law by carrying regular coins into the casino.

The loss limit law was ultimately repealed, but the tokens are still in use because the casinos like them. They know that most customers will not leave with a few leftover tokens in their pockets. Some will cash them in, but many will just drop them in a machine on their way out. Another reason the casinos like tokens is that they have fewer assets tied up in the coin hoppers of hundreds of machines. A quarter is worth twenty-five cents, but the tokens cost only pennies apiece to have minted. Consequently the token system improves the cash flow and other casino accounting numbers.

Tokens - The Future

To avoid the handling problems of six different coin denominations, some casinos are testing a new token system devised by some inventive Australians. Under this system, now commonly used in Australia, all machines, regardless of denomination, will accept only special dollar-value tokens. If you play a quarter machine, for example, the token will register as four credits. Now the coin counter in the change booth only has to handle the one denomination. Whether or not this will catch on in the United States is still an open question.

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