Sure the casino makes money on the playing of the machine. It just ties up that money for a long time. Most... not all....walk out the door. The $200 strike makes a lot more come back to the cage. Not very many people that I have met at the machines turn the strikes that they have won in for the money.
If it costs $7.50 for the strike and they make $2.50 on every one won then they still have $5.00 tied up till they can call the strike obsolete.
What I wonder is what is going to happen when the price of silver gets to the melt value of the strike. People will all stop turning the strikes in then, and the cost of the strikes will go up. What will happen to the $10 strike then? I think that this is something that we need to talk about. Will the center of the strike get smaller? Will the strikes be called $20 strikes and the machines go up to $.50 or $1.50 for three coins in? I would rather see the later as a personal preference. The silver in the center of a strike is already too small to put much of a design on.