But on that guide page for the Golden Nugget, all the chips have raised letters except for the last one, but that has a smaller inlay.
This is an optical illusion - all the Golden Nugget house molds I'm aware of have "Golden" and "Nugget" pressed into the chip, while the G N rests raised up in the embossed oval. In short, Golden & Nugget are recessed; GN is raised.
That being said, there's actually *at least* three different variants of this mold, and all are in use w/the current issue $1 chip (and possibly other house chips). The first variant is the one you see listed in all the ChipGuide blue $1 chips - a wide-set G and N. The second variant has the G and N set narrower together, and the third variant has the G and N mirrored (that's surely a design oops that failed QA inspection).
At this point it's important you realize what the Chip Guide is and isn't.
The Chip Guide is basically an online museum - the Museum of Gaming History (as referenced at the top of their web page). The images belonged to Greg Susong as he was cataloging them, and when he passed those images eventually made their way into the possession of the Casino Collectibles Association and/or the Museum of Gaming History (not exactly sure of the precise relationship between all of them).
The Chip Guide is NOT authoritative. Frequently details will be flat wrong, be it mold used, chip colors, years of operations, etc. Due to the clandestine nature of many gambling houses and suppliers, exact, plain-text records weren't often kept. Some records were codified/falsified, while some have disappeared entirely. Others, such as from the US Playing Card Company for their crest and seal chips, exist in a largely intact state. But since most casinos - at least at some point in their history - attempted to conceal various details about their operations, not all information in there is accurate. Better to use it as a best known guess rather than ironclad fact.
The Chip Guide is NOT exhaustive. Take the current issue GN $1 chips, for instance. They only have one example of the three molds used for the current issue. What complicates things further is that some folks consider chips with different UV placement as distinct variants. That means if two UV placements exists - and if some exist w/o a UV marker - that means at least 9 variants of the same chip exist. They have 1 documented. The only way new items get catalogued is if volunteers/collectors submit those images. Many don't do that (I'm guilty).
All that said, the Chip Guide is still a fantastic resource for what it is, and it's far, far better than the alternative (which is nothing). As for your current purposes, probably best not to seek chips of all the same mold variant. That'd be even worse folly than those who seek only to have long-cane versions of their
THC chips. And for what it's worth, the Chip Guide considers both
LCV and
SCV distinct molds - and if there's a
LCV on one side/
SCV on the other, that's a third variant.
As for my purposes, I frequently don't much care. They're both close enough to the same in my book, and I only look for one version when collecting.
