Well it's back to the real world after cruising the Caribbean on the Grand Princess for 7 delightful & rewarding days. Chips onboard include 2 different $1's, a $5 house chip, $5 Millennium, Inaugural $5's, Win Card chips and the ever present roulettes from 2 tables. One table has the new "ridged" variety & the other has the plain edge. There is a "silver strike" but no machine. They give out these pieces after you collect 25 or 30 promotional tokens for various events held in the casino. Upon further inspection the token is the HSP type with dolphins on one side & an image of the Grand on the other. I didn't have enough tokens to get one of these & the cage would not sell any to me. There is also a .999 silver token, which I was unable to read. Both come with a neat looking holder, not slab! Neither has any denomination. I was able to purloin 5 of the 7 color roulettes from one table & only one color from the other. After a few days word got out that roulettes were being taken & not cashed out at the table. It became a bit dicey with the casino manager standing close by to try to figure out who was doing the dirty deed. Luckily, I was able to enlist the help of this hayseed from some place in Kansas to run interference for me.
In St. Maarten all of the casinos that I was able to visit were still using chips that had been in circulation since the time of the flood! All roulettes were generic. No room keys or slot cards to be had. The Diamond Casino is up & running & the Jump Up Casino is still under construction & is likely to open for the high season. Nothing new or exciting on the island except for the views along the beach on the French side of the island.
To recap, I have roulettes from the ship as well as Win Card chips to trade. I also have a VERY limited number of room keys which I would consider trading for a premium such as 2 or 3 for 1. I'll check my e-mail later this week & I'll get back to everyone.