You would give one long crank on the wall phone and say "Hello, Central, give me Long Distance". When the LD operator came the line you would say "I want to call Las Vegas, Nevada number 5100". If all the lines were up and the creeks weren't flooded between you and Las Vegas, the phone would eventually ring at the Thunderbird.

Nice old Thunderbird matchbook, but I doubt if anyone can tell if it's the first issue or not. Same goes for some old Flamingo matchbooks I've seen on eBay. When I asked the seller how he could tell the design was the first used there, he said "all the dealers know that...". Probably harder task than even putting the casino's gaming chips in the proper time sequence. Anyone know if the match-makers kept a card file on their customer orders?