Jim,

I had lunch with the General Manager at the Venetian about a year ago. He and I were talking about his commemorative chip program when he mentioned that he had ALL of the Sands chips left over from the last issue!

He asked me to come back in a couple of hours while he got them from security. When I came back, He had one each of the 16th and 17th issues, and he had many of these chips that were not listed in either book. It is important to note that both sold out ones were included in this group. I asked about quantity, and he told me pallets, not boxes or cases, but pallets.

I don't know where they were stored, but shortly thereafter some chips began to surface. I never bought a single one. The next time I went by, he had left the Venetian to move to another property.

At the time I thought about the story of the 50,000 $1 chips being sold out and knew that this could not be true. Exercise caution with these chips, they have not been destroyed yet.

-John