The history of Cuba and gaming goes back more than 80 years. In the Smithsonian Magazine, there is a 2016 article titled When the Mob Owned Cuba. It states that famous mobsters Meyer Lansky and Charles Luciano made the country a place for tons of criminal business. They were both responsible for much of the casino gaming that happened on the island.
Noted on Britanica.com, Meyer Lansky had gambling operations going on in Cuba that started in the 1930s. Wilbur Clark was one of Las Vegas’s early casino owners. Besides having his name in the title for the Desert Inn, which he opened in 1950, Mr. Clark also had his name on a casino in Cuba. Wilbur Clark’s Casino in Havana was open from 1955 to 1959.
The last luxurious hotel and casino that was built in Cuba before Fidel Castro took over was the Hotel Riviera. It was also financed by Meyer Lansky. The grand opening was in 1957. Hollywood legend Ginger Rogers had a show there.
Though there is no casino gambling today due to the Fidel Castro Revolution, you can still see famous hotels that had gambling in the country including the Nacional and the Hotel Riviera.
If you are visiting Cuba in the future, you should consider a visit to the Hotel Nacional de Cuba. It opened in 1930. It is the sight of the infamous mob conference that was organized by Meyer Lansky and Charles Luciano in 1946. A scene in the The Godfather Part II movie was inspired by that mob conference.
In an article on The Mob Museum’s website titled The Rise of Castro and the Fall of the Havana Mob, it noted that many Cuba casino employees packed their bags and headed for Las Vegas when Castro took power.
According to Simon’s Online Casino Gambling Blog, all forms of gambling are illegal in Cuba to this very day. Will Cuba ever get casinos back? That has yet to be determined. There has been a lot of discussion about this topic in recent years. If Cuba ever gets casino gaming again, it will be interesting to see what the chips look like.
One final conclusion that can be made is that because Cuba’s casinos came mostly to an end at the start of the Castro regime, Las Vegas drew many casino professionals to the desert at the end of the 1950s. Those were some of the Entertainment Capital of the World’s earliest years.
Below you can find chips from a variety of Cuba Casinos for sale. You can purchase each one by clicking the picture:
Capri Casino $1 Casino de Capri $25
Casino de Capri $100 chips
Casino Del Rio $5 Habana Hilton $5 Chips
Habana Hilton $25 Montmartre $5
Sans Souci Roulette Chip St. John's Casino $5
St. John's Casino Roulette Chips
St. John's Casino $5 St. John's Roulette Chip
St. John's Casino Roulette Chips
Tropicana $5 Tropicana $25
Wilbur Clark's Casino $5 Wilbur Clark's Casino $25
Wilbur Clark's Casino $100 Wilbur Clark's Beige Chip
