Nevada Gamblers Let $24M in Small Change Vouchers Expire Over the Last Year 

Since going almost entirely cashless, most casinos in Las Vegas now pay out slot machine cash-outs of less than $1 as ticket vouchers. 

When players leave a machine with an awkward small amount remaining, they often don’t even bother to collect the tickets. These are collected by casino staff, other gamblers, or in some cases, put into a charity collection box.

If collected by the casino or simply discarded, they eventually expire, and then the money is split 75% to 25% between the Silver State and respective casino operators. 

This week, the Nevada Gaming Control Board issued its annual report on the numbers of unclaimed, low-cash vouchers. And they certainly add up.

The NGCB says that a total of $24.4 million was left behind by gamblers in such a manner over the last financial year. 

Small Change For Some 

The practice of printing voucher tickets instead of handing out small change coins was introduced during the pandemic. However, likely due to the increased chance of left-behind vouchers returning a portion of the money to the casino when compared with coins, the new way of doing things stuck. 

Even at 25%, Nevada casinos collected $6 million from unclaimed tickets over the last financial year. That’s not a huge amount, but definitely no small change, either. Left behind tickets for larger amounts did still occur at casinos before the change to small denomination vouchers. In fact, Nevada introduced regulation on the issue in 2011. 

However, 50% of the $183 million collected in unclaimed vouchers since then has been taken after 2020, when low-value vouchers came in. 

The casinos are charged with holding unclaimed tickets for a minimum of 90 days before sending them to the taxman and claiming their share. Some casinos keep them for 180 days as standard. 

Penny Pinching 

Not all Nevada casinos follow this way of doing things. Some, such as Wynn Las Vegas, offer charity boxes where players can donate any change they don’t fancy queuing up to claim at the casino cage. 

Cosmopolitan, M-Resort, and others also follow this policy. Caesars Palace and Flamingo automatically donate the change from left tickets to homeless charities and food banks. 

Meanwhile, many old-school casinos in the Downtown Las Vegas area, including those owned by large operator Boyd Gaming, avoid the conundrum entirely by still paying out coins. 

While gamblers are highly unlikely to get caught doing so on the odd occasion, it is technically theft for a person to cash unclaimed gambling vouchers that aren’t theirs. 

Although prosecutions over such thefts are basically non-existent in Nevada, scavengers collecting small unclaimed vouchers from machines, as their coin hustling forebears, are not looked upon very kindly by anyone on casino floors.

In 2004, one man was sentenced for gambling theft in Black Hawk, Colorado, after cashing a 76-cent voucher left in a machine by a previous player.