Man loses legal bid to cash in $59,500 in chips from now-defunct New Jersey casino

NY Post from AP ^ | April 8, 2025 | staff

[xxqqzz]

He bought the chips at an online auction and apparently is out what he paid for them plus legal fees. Someone was supposed to destroy them when the casino closed, but kept them.

[Responsibility2nd]

So he bought stolen merchandise and didn’t know it.

Still sucks for him.

[metmom]

That’s what greed will get you.

[LouAvul]

So, somebody bought some chips for less than their face value, apparently. Then he tried to redeem them for their face value.

It never occurred to him that the seller would not have sold them if they could be redeemed? Not too bright, if you believe his story. I don't believe his story.

[T.B. Yoits]

Yeah, it’s one thing when someone takes one of each dollar amount as souvenirs, and another when someone takes boxes of them.

[gloryblaze]

... The bank where the chips were stored opened the box in 2010 and confiscated the chips, eventually sending them to the auction house from which Hawkins purchased them....

The bank got the money, less fees, from the auction house, apparently, after the box renter declared bankruptcy. Did the bank send the proceeds to the state unclaimed dept.? ??????

[j.havenfarm]

I don’t know that I would put it that way. I assume it’s a reputable auction house; they don’t appear to have done anything wrong. Sometimes genuine easy money opportunities do present themselves. I wish the article told us how much he paid

[smokingfrog]

How many did he buy & much did he pay for them?

[Opinionated Blowhard]

The buyer should have seen red flags everywhere with this purchase. Someone is going to sell him casino chips and he thinks he can make a quick buck converting them to cash? If that was the case, why didn’t the original owner simply convert them to cash?

[metmom]

There have to be other options then for him to recover his money.

You’d think going after the employee who stole the stuff would work.

[dennisw]

The only lawyer who will take this case is a 35% contingency lawyer. So the lawyer took a long shot on this unlikely case.

[OldHarbor]

The man told the UPA he had bought the chips at an online auction and did not know their source.

He was ignorant then. I went to auctions for years , do your homework ! Especially since it was online, do some interweb work and save your self some grief.

Perhaps he can have them embedded in a coffee table with the clear resin finish, so he can display his casino chip collection

The man appealed the decision, claiming in part that the UPA had relied on insufficient evidence

C’mon man, the chips were from 40 years ago ! The buyer acted out of ignorance. I wonder how much he paid for them ! 😂

[Damifino]

Sometimes genuine easy money opportunities do present themselves.

> Yeah, my big score in life was buying an old acrylic toilet seat that had US coins embedded for $12 at an auction. The coins were all pre-1964 silver so I knew it was worth more than the $12 I paid.
I took it to the flea market to show a vendor that sold old coins. He looked it over and said there was about $150 in silver in there if I could extract the coins form the acrylic.
Another customer piped in and offered me $100 for the seat as-is. My wife was happy to see the saga of the used toilet seat end right there.

[j.havenfarm]

I do t think so. No “privity” of contract with the employee, and no fraudulent statements made by the employee to induce the sale. The auction house has genuine title passed by the bank after forfeiture of the contents of the box, and undoubtedly they sell their stuff as-is

[Magnum44]

[Magnum44]

[xp38]

Yeah that would have been my first question and the answer would be that these chips weren’t convertible to cash and thus unless one wanted the bunny logo on some casino chips of a now defunct casino that is all you would get.

[OldHarbor]

I can pretty much guarantee that the auction house made no claims that the chips were redeemable . if they had done so then there would have been an issue, but any auctioneer worth their salt would not have made such a claim.

Something like this would have been sold as a souvenir or as Playboy memorabillia.

[Magnum44]

[Ann Archy]

What a DUMBASS crook.