A New Jersey man who thought he hit the jackpot when he purchased nearly $60,000 in chips from a defunct Atlantic City Casino was denied a payout by a state appellate court.

Keith Hawkins bought 389 gaming chips at an unspecified reduced rate from an online auction. He believed his find, which was from the Playboy Hotel and Casino that operated between 1981 and 1984, would have netted him $59,000.

He attempted to cash them in with the New Jersey State Treasury Department’s Unclaimed Property Administration, but the agency said the chips could not be redeemed because they were stolen from the casino before it was shuttered, according to USA Today. The appellate court agreed with the administration and denied Mr. Hawkins from cashing in.

“We are satisfied that the evidence in the record supports UPA’s conclusion that the chips presented by claimant were ‘unissued Playboy gaming chips that were to be destroyed’ and, therefore, ‘ineligible for redemption,'” the recent ruling said.

The New Jersey State Police were called in to investigate the unredeemed casino chips, and found that they were the same items stolen by a former employee who confessed to cops that he had “pilfered several boxes of unused chips ‘sometime around 1990’ and put them in a bank deposit box,” according to the ruling. He said kept them in a safe deposit box and had forgotten about them.

In 2010, officials at the bank where the chips were stored confiscated them after opening the box. The whereabouts of the goods were unknown until 2022 until they appeared on the online auction where Mr. Hawkins had purchased them.