I've had a couple of requests for information on the obsolete California set of chips from the Sahara Gardens. Here is the little I know.

The Sahara Gardens Casino was located at 3910 Portola Drive in Santa Cruz. It opened in 1982 and closed in 1990. It was a small, eight table cardroom. Its most popular game was lowball.

Apparently, very few (if any) California collections contain complete sets of Sahara Gardens chips. These complete sets consist of seven chips: a hotstamp PAN chip and six nice inlay chips in the follwing denominatios: 25c, 50c, $1, $5, $25 and $100. The $5 chip was not previously catalogued. All chips are in good to excellent condition EXCEPT the 50c chips, which show a good amount of play.

The six known chips are valued in Eastman's California guide (low-end) at $180. Complete sets of all seven chips are priced at $66 as one of October's specials on the Chips Off the Old Block website. Indivdual chips are also available.

If anyone has any more questions, please send me an e-mail.

Tery Lazarus
Chips Off the Old Block