Hotel Glacier is in Antananarivo the capital city of Madagascar. The hotel has a slot machine room - it would seem that these two tokens are from there.

“Fmg” on the tokens is an abbreviation for Franc Malgache, French for “Madagascan Francs”. Until a few years ago Francs and Ariary were used in Madagascar at 5 Francs to 1 Ariary, but these days just the Ariary is used.

Madagascar’s second largest is Toamasina (often called Tamatave). On these tokens from Casino le Neptune within Hotel le Neptune, reference is made to the hotel/casino’s location - “TAMATAVE” can be seen spelt out along the top of the four playing cards on the first side of the tokens.

I have two of these “Grand Cercle” tokens - the one above is 24mm diameter and the other has the same designs but is 26mm in diameter. Both pieces appear to be Nickel-plated-Brass. The information I have from my source for these tokens is that these tokens are common to the casinos in each of Colbert Hotel & Casino and Hilton Madagascar both of which are in Antananarivo. Someone else gave me the information that these tokens were for 500 FMG (24mm diameter piece) and 1000 FMG (26mm diameter piece).
 
 

New page at August 2005 - Some Casino Gaming Tokens